


A Slash of Red

by todisturbtheuniverse



Series: Tongues Will Wag [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Purple!Hawke Humor, Romance, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-09
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 18:58:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 50
Words: 21,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2280987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Isabela washes ashore in Kirkwall, she expects to stay just long enough to grab the relic and go. There are two things she didn't count on: 1) the damned thing is hard to find, and 2) Hawke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> A counterpart to [A Slash of Blue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/964977).

The sun is rising when your knees finally scrape sand.

The sea gives you one last little push—a fond goodbye—and then you’re docked in the Free Marches, gasping for air past the burn of saltwater in your throat. You press your cheek to the sand. You know you need to move, and quickly, but your limbs quiver.

When the tide moves up, water caressing your lips, you get your arms beneath you and push. Your muscles groan with the effort, but you stagger to your feet. The cliffs tilt around you. You plant your sodden boots firmly in the ground and squint down the beach. There’s a body two dozen paces away. Perhaps one of your crew made it, too.

You aren’t hopeful. The body is facedown, arms and legs spread at awkward angles. You go to your knees beside him and gently turn him toward you. Casavir is barely recognizable, his face bloated from drowning.

Your hand clenches in his soaked shirt, angry tears pricking your eyes. There is nothing to say and no one to hear it. You’ve known this man since you were barely more than a child, and now he will never speak another word of advice to you again.

You hate to leave him here, but you must. If you are unlucky—and so far, you have been  _very_ unlucky—the qunari will soon wash ashore, too.

With gentle fingers, you close Casavir’s eyes. You turn from his body and look toward the buildings rising in the distance. You hope there’s a river between here and there; it’s at least a day’s journey, and your throat aches with thirst.

You spare a last look for the sea and the wreckage it carries in her arms, and then you leave  _Siren’s Call_  to her grave.


	2. A Friendly Face

You hate dealing with the likes of Lucky. You haven’t been so alone since you were a child, and you loathe it. It makes your blood boil, the way a man sneers at a woman alone.

It’s been years since you went anywhere without one of your mates shadowing you. You’ll get no such help in Kirkwall. You just get Lucky, who can’t even earn the coin you scraped together for him.

And Hayder. Bloody Hayder.

Your temper is short. You’re spoiling for a fight. Lucky and his dogs will have to do.

You toss three bits to Corff, who refills your drink. Goading Lucky is so easy; you drink half the mug down in between insults. He seethes. You’ll know your opening when you see it.

He leans down to spit  _bitch_ in your face, as though it’s a word he’s allowed to use, and that’s all the invitation you need. Hand on head, shove down,  _crack_ —like an egg against the bar counter. Already, your mood has improved.

You still don’t have your mates, but you have your fists. You have your daggers. You have lips that pull into a smirk when Lucky can barely even get a hand on his sword before your blade is at his throat. The Hanged Man is quiet with awe. You’d have preferred not to be noticed at all—to find the damn book and get out of Kirkwall before anyone thought anything of a shipless pirate—but this will do just as well. If a few broken fingers won’t teach them, this will.

Lucky and his men stagger away. You watch them tumble for the door, smiling, and then your eyes catch on someone else.

Oh. She’s  _lovely_. Ferelden, if her pale skin and sunburned cheekbones are any indication. Dark hair, the brightest blue eyes you’ve ever seen, and she’s looking right at you. Without blinking, she sticks a foot out. Lucky trips right over her, swearing.

She smiles—so deceptively sweet. You eye her daggers, her threadbare smuggler’s armor, her haggard companions.

Oh, she’ll do. She’ll do  _nicely._


	3. Priorities

Your first real job with Hawke—after Hayder’s taken care of, anyway—is on a Tuesday night, and it doesn’t seem like much of a job at all. It involves ditching any recognizable armor, like Aveline’s guard uniform, and walking Kirkwall’s unsavory places in street clothes. As anticipated, it takes less than twenty minutes for an angry gang of dwarves to try to murder the lot of you.

“Did you mention whether or not this was profitable?” you call over to Hawke, sizing up your first opponent.

Rather than answer in a direct fashion, Hawke says, “One night, in Lowtown, we found a dirty scrap of paper.”

Her voice is only a little strained, even though she’s holding a swearing dwarf at arm’s length while trying to jam her dagger under his helm. You barely catch a glimpse of this, though, because this dwarf is not the only assailant tonight, and someone’s trying to put a knife in your kidney.

“It told us where the Sharps Highwaymen were hiding out, and we went to clear out their base in the hopes of finding something valuable.” Behind you, there’s an ugly  _squelch_ , followed shortly by the heavy  _thud_ that heralds a body hitting the ground.

Twenty feet away, Bethany laughs and freezes one of the thugs solid. “Not that we did,” she comments.

“Predictably, there was nothing but a lot of bloodstained armor and a very weird shortbow, which is no use because the only person  _I_ know who uses a bow prefers a single damn  _crossbow_.” Hawke stabs the target that Bethany froze, and he bursts into thousands of slivery pieces.

She has her back turned to the thug about to gut her, so you throw one of your daggers and run after it. It gets him right in the eye. You pull it back out of his skull before he even hits the ground.

“Thanks,” Hawke pants, kicking another assailant in the face. “But  _then_ , we walked out of that pointless hovel, and this  _woman_ is standing there, and says, ‘Get rid of any other groups like that, and I’ll be at the Hanged Man with some toys as reward.’” She lobs a miasmic flask into the dwarves mobbing Aveline. “Handed us some gold, cool as you please, and just walked away! Now, I thought she might mean something rather more exciting than  _gold_ when she said  _toys_ —”

“Shut  _up_ ,” the nearest dwarf groans.

Hawke kicks him down, then sticks a dagger through his throat. You trip up the next one that tries to run past you, knife him in the back, and when you look up, it’s over: Aveline’s sheathing her sword, Bethany is shaking blood off her staff, and Hawke is retrieving her shorter dagger from the last fellow she threw it at.

“But gold is fine, too,” she relents. “And that, my dear pirate, is why we walk around Kirkwall at night, pretending to be targets. For  _gold_.”

She has her priorities straight, this Hawke.


	4. Punchline

At the week’s end, you find Hawke and her hangers-on in Varric’s room. The group gathered at the table looks as woebegone as can be expected after a trek up Sundermount. There’s a new face among them, too, an elf who won’t quite meet your eyes.

“Errand didn’t go like you expected?” you quip, dropping into the seat across from Hawke.

She smiles, a little ruefully. “It never does.” She gestures to the elf with her off hand; her dominant arm stays stiff at her side. “Merrill, Isabela. Isabela, Merrill.”

“Hello,” Merrill chirps nervously. You pour her a cup and push it over with a friendly smile before turning back to Hawke.

“So,” you prompt. “That business with the amulet. How did you get saddled with that?”

She shrugs. “I killed an ogre.”

Varric  _tsks_. “You can’t lead with that, Hawke. Ruins the punchline.”

She shoots him a hearty glare. “We were fleeing Ferelden.” Aveline nods along. “After Ostagar. And the darkspawn just kept coming, the bloody things, and then there was an ogre.”

You notice that Bethany has gone very still, knuckles clenched white around her mug. She looks very small without her staff on her shoulder.

“And I killed it,” Hawke goes on, while Varric grumbles, “and then a bloody dragon fell out of the sky, fried the rest of the darkspawn, turned into a witch, and started talking favors for favors.”

“Flemeth,” you guess. “She’s certainly gotten around lately.”

Hawke’s brows draw together. “Funny,” she says. “Usually that story gets a lot more skepticism.”

“Especially when you tell it like  _that_ ,” Varric mutters. “No flair, no—“

“The Warden had a similar story,” you interrupt, smirking. “She regaled me when I…met her…in Denerim.”

“You met the Warden?” Hawke asks, missing the innuendo entirely.

You wink. “If you know what I mean.”

Hawke splutters, spilling ale down her shirt. Varric beats the table, roaring with laughter, and Merrill looks around at the various chaos with a bemused expression.

“What  _do_  you mean?” she asks, completely earnest.

“Sex,” Aveline sighs, her own cheeks a little red. She drops her face into her hands. “She means sex.”

“Oh!” Merrill pauses, nibbling her lip. “Well, that’s very impressive, isn’t it?”

You drape your arm around Merrill’s shoulders. “Very impressive indeed,” you say, catching Hawke’s eye, and she collapses face-first on the table, shaking with fresh laughter.


	5. A Taste

Usually, when you want someone, you get them.

Well, sometimes they shout at you until you go away, but that’s fine, too. Everyone knows where they stand, and you’re usually gone by morning, anyway.

But Hawke isn’t like that. When she comes to the Hanged Man, it’s to have a drink or ask for your help with a job. She never makes good on the invitation you issued her, all those weeks ago when your affiliation was new. Sometimes, when she’s had a drink or six, she looks like she’s going to; her cheeks go pink and her mouth pops open, but then she looks down at her drink again, and the card game continues like no one noticed the lapse.

You wonder what’s holding her back. Perhaps she doesn’t like to take her pleasure where she works, but honestly, Hawke works everywhere. If she stuck to that rule, she’d never get any.

You consider the notion with horror.

“Have you ever been to the Rose, Hawke?” you ask.

She frowns across the table at you, eyes bloodshot with exhaustion. Around you, the patrons of the Hanged Man have dropped like flies. Some of your companions are still playing Wicked Grace, but with great reluctance, as though the cards have grown too heavy for them.

“We were just there last week,” she says. “Returning that Shawl of…” She wrinkles her nose. “Destitution, or whatever it was. Scarf of Sexual Pleasure? That’s not right.”

“I  _meant_  to get your needs seen to.”

Hawke laughs. She only blushes a little. “You’re barking if you think I have the coin for that. We’ve a suicidal expedition to fund!”

“You won’t make it to the Deep Roads if you shrivel up and die from deprivation,” you point out.

At last, she sputters. “I’m not  _deprived_.”

“Oh, so you’re sleeping with someone, then.”

The red in her face gets deeper. “Not currently, no.”

“You  _have_ slept with someone, haven’t you?”

“Maker, Isabela,” she says, dropping her face to her hands. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Oh, please. You were starving for it last week.”

You can still taste her—her soft red lips, her warm wet mouth. The flesh of her hip as you dragged her closer. The befuddled look on her face when you pulled away. Drinking games have always been fun, but they’ve never been  _that_ fun.

“That was nice,” she agrees, very slowly, as though she’s having to choose every word.

You laugh. “Don’t be insulting! Am I not your type, then? You only like men?”

“I  _do_ like men.”

“That explains it.”

“But.” She pauses, frowning. The blush has faded a little. “I like women, too.”

“Well.” You push back from the table. “If you decide you like  _me_ , the offer stands. In case your bits are in danger of falling off from lack of use.”

At last, she chuckles, head tipping back to look up at you. “Don’t you usually sail off into the sunset after your trysts? Wouldn’t it be weird, not leaving?”

“Only if you make it weird,” you tease, and turn to stagger to your room.

She doesn't follow. It’s more disappointing than you thought it would be.


	6. Rescue

“Out at all hours of the day,” Leandra mutters. You hear fabric shifting, sharp tugs of old hands putting worn armor in place. “And the night, too. Coming back smelling like the bottom of a barrel—“

Hawke sighs, a soft sound, ancient. “We’ve talked about this, Mother,” she says, only a touch of impatience in her voice. “I know you don’t approve of what I do, but we have to eat, and Gamlen’s not good for it.”

Merrill, standing beside you, isn’t listening, bless her heart. She’s coaxing flowers out of the dry, cracked dirt. When you glance to your right, at Aveline, you can tell how hard she’s trying not to hear.

“I know,” Leandra says.

You know the woman means well, but you’ve seen Hawke slave on jobs just to take home enough food to feed her starving family. She doesn’t need  _this_ , too.

You take the stairs a few at a time, popping up on the top step in time to see Leandra’s hand cupping Hawke’s cheek. “You look just like Malcolm when you say that,” she says.

Hawke smiles—nothing like her usual smug grin. The feeble curve of it burns a hole in your gut.

“Hawke,” you say, and the woman herself turns. Her face rearranges itself into a now-familiar smirk. She steps away from her mother, toward you, and you link your arm through hers. “Those spiders won’t kill themselves, you know.”

She laughs. Leandra smiles politely, obviously puzzled.

“This is Isabela,” Hawke tells her mother. “Captain of the most wondrous ship I’ve never seen.”

“You  _arse_ ,” you sigh. “Next time a dragon shakes you round like a chew toy, don’t expect me to carry you back to Kirkwall.”

“You didn’t carry me,” she says. “You  _dragged_ me. It felt a lot worse.” She puts her fingers in her lips and whistles; her mabari lumbers past Leandra, knocking her hand affectionately as he goes. “I might not be back until tomorrow, Mother,” Hawke says, tugging your arm. “Tell Gamlen not to worry.”

“Be  _careful_ ,” Leandra says, but Hawke doesn’t offer a reply.


	7. Past Tense

“I had a brother,” Hawke mumbles into Varric’s pillow.

Your hand pauses in her hair. It has been a long week. The Hanged Man’s finest doesn’t always cut it at the end of a day like this.

Is this how Hawke thinks it works? She sees a sliver of your heart, so she bares the worst of hers?

“His name was Carver,” she continues, her blue eyes closed, and you resume petting her hair. You’re too drunk to stop her, anyway, and despite the impressive amount of whiskey she’s thrown down tonight, she sounds perfectly lucid. “He was Beth’s twin. That ogre killed him before I could kill it. The idiot. He survived all of Ostagar just to get beaten to death by a passing ogre.”

She snorts. You pass the bottle to her, and she props herself up far enough to take a deep drink.

“Mother blames me,” she says, handing the bottle back. You drink, too. “She took back what she said, but she still gives me that awful look. I was supposed to look after him.”

She sways a little closer to you, and you lean up just a bit, and then her eyes catch on yours and she smiles like she’s remembered where she is and she leans down and she kisses you—the sweetest, briefest touch.

She pulls back just as quickly, turns her face away, and burps. “I think I’m very drunk,” she mutters apologetically, her lucidity abandoning her at last, and slumps back to the bed. “Please don’t let me vomit on Varric’s pillow.”

“I won’t, sweet thing,” you tell her, a little touched and a little troubled by how much she trusts you.

She inhales—a long low breath announcing that she’s asleep—and you stay with her, even though the weight of that soft, easy kiss feels like a collar around your neck.


	8. Foreshadowing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: Act of Mercy.

Most of the time, you like sand. You dislike, however, the little grains that dry up in the bottom of your boots and grate away at your feet after a long day on the Wounded Coast.

You dislike even more that you haven’t drunk enough yet to stop feeling them. Hawke went out for another pitcher fifteen minutes ago and hasn’t come back.

“I’m going to look for her,” you announce, disengaging from the game of Diamondback.

“Bring two pitchers, since she’s been gone for so long,” Varric grumbles.

As soon as you step into the hallway, you hear the holdup. Hawke is in the room next door, her voice pitched low. You take a few steps closer, listening.

“We should have killed them.”  _Anders_ , you realize.

“And put Meredith herself on the scent of those people? Of us? What do you think she’d make of a dozen dead templars?”

“This head start isn’t enough. They’ll be caught, they’ll—”

“I did what I could, Anders.”

“You didn’t do enough.”

The door opens with enough force to bounce off the wall beside it. Anders doesn’t spare so much as a glance for you; he stomps down the stairs and out of sight. Hawke emerges a good minute later, looking more irritated than you’ve ever seen her.

“Trouble in paradise?” you ask, and she forces a smile.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than eavesdrop?” she sighs.

You link your arm through hers. “I  _would_ be drinking, but someone never came back with the pitcher.”

She makes a face. “Sorry. Anders ambushed me.”

“I’m not blaming  _you_. I’m saying we ought to go after him, steal his coin, and use that to pay for  _two_  pitchers. Maybe three.”

She chuckles, a little warmth bleeding back into her features. “Be my guest. I think Justice would skin me if I went after him now.”

You tug her down the stairs. “Never mind. We’ll put it on Varric’s tab. Don’t let the grouchy old Fade spirit ruin a perfectly good evening.”

“Is that what this is?”

“Well.” You wink. “It could be.”

She rolls her eyes, cheeks turning red, and leads the way to the bar.


	9. Stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: Magistrate's Orders.

Hawke trembles when she’s angry.

It’s a fine shiver, like she’s working to contain some awful force. It vanishes the instant she springs to action, but while she’s forced to stand still, she shakes. She bites off her words. Her fists clench.

You know that Hawke has seen and done a lot of things. The way Varric tells the tales, you would have imagined an entirely different woman: someone without laugh lines around her eyes; someone who gutted anyone who looked at her askance; someone ten feet tall, perhaps, with gleaming fangs instead of teeth.

But she has never been that Hawke to you. She’s been a terrible joke, a stifled laugh, a drunk kiss. A dagger when she needs it, but she’d just as soon go without.

She’s not that woman today, beneath the weight of these ruins, with this soft, fleshy man begging for his death. You see the woman from the stories, and she is truly terrifying.

You feel the pressure change in the room the instant Hawke decides to act—she steps forward without warning and brings her dagger up in a smooth, swift slice. Kelder collapses. Hawke, stony-faced and no longer trembling, turns away.

The trip back along the Wounded Coast is thick with silence until Bethany shatters it. “He was sick,” she says, her voice so thin that it’s almost carried away by the sea breeze.

“He was a murderer,” Hawke replies. You’ve never heard her be so curt with her sister. “A murderer trying to excuse his crimes with imagined demons.”

“They were real to him,” Bethany argues.

Aveline puts a hand on your arm and you both stop, letting the sisters draw ahead of you, but their words drift back, anyway.

“What should I have done, Bethany?” The heat has faded from Hawke’s voice; she just sounds tired now. “Hand him back to the Magistrate, so that he could escape again in the hopes of dying, and kidnap another poor child while he’s at it? It was what he wanted.”

“There are sanitariums for people like him.” Bethany is softer now, too.

Hawke sighs. She drapes an arm over Bethany’s shoulders. “I couldn’t think straight,” she admits. “When he said he was plagued by demons, but the Circle found no evidence, I just—he’s never seen a real demon in his whole life. But you have to live with that threat every day.”

“We all have burdens.”

“As wise as ever.” Hawke glances behind her. “What are you two up to?” she calls.

“Gathering seashells!” you shout back, and scoop a few out of the sand. “I think we ought to make bracelets out of them!”

Hawke cracks a smile, and she’s the woman you know again—a bad joke, an easy laugh. Varric’s stories don’t do her justice.


	10. Wishes

You wish you could go with her.

The Deep Roads are no place for a pirate, and Hawke has already chosen her company. Varric is a given, of course. Anders’s previous occupation will come in handy. And Hawke goes nowhere without Bethany.

But still, you find yourself wishing, and the idea did not originate in your head, which makes it all the more dangerous. Hawke doesn’t need you. What Hawke  _really_ needs is someone to hold the line with her. Aveline would do, if it weren’t for her damned fascination with legitimate employment.

“I think you ought to go,” you tell her by way of greeting.

Aveline looks up from her desk, clearly surprised by your appearance in her office. “What?”

“To the Deep Roads,” you elaborate. You don’t sit. You’re not going to stay. “With Hawke.”

Aveline’s brow furrows. You don’t like the contemplative look in her green eyes. “Hawke’s chosen her company.”

“Two mages and one crossbow?” You laugh. It doesn’t sound like you at all. “You’re a tactician, oh great guard-captain. Does that sound like an ideal group to you?”

Aveline rubs a hand over her face. “I can’t leave Kirkwall for that long. I’m still in the middle of training for this position. Do you think they’d hold it for me until I get back?”

“You could say please?”

“I don’t like it, either,” she continues, as if you hadn’t spoken at all, “but who would I replace? She needs Anders for his expertise, and she won’t hear of leaving Bethany behind.”

“Maybe I could convince her,” you say, and it lacks the usual lilt that would make the words lewd. “Fenris could go.”

Aveline’s eyes narrow. “Maybe you could,” she says, “but if you think you’re going to talk Fenris into a weeks-long journey in the Deep Roads with Anders, you are truly as senseless as you seem.”

You’d forgotten that bit.

“Hawke will be fine,” Aveline says. She sounds suspiciously reassuring. “Maker knows she’s survived so far.”

You meet Hawke for a last drink at The Hanged Man, and when you fail to convince her—as Aveline promised you would—you consider carefully what you’ll say next. You mean to tell her that it’s been fun, but you have a lead on the relic and you won’t be here when she returns. You mean to say that if she’s ever in Antiva, she ought to look you up.

Instead, you say, “Be careful, Hawke. Kirkwall wouldn’t be the same without you.”

She hides her pleased smile in her mug. Traitorous warmth blooms in your chest.

For half a second, you hope that she won’t return from the Deep Roads at all.


	11. Fishing

With Hawke gone, your schedule opens up significantly. She had a job lined up every day—and most nights—and you always went along when she asked. You needed the coin. When you lost  _Siren’s Call_ , you lost everything.

But you have coin to spare, now, and you put it to good use, flashing it at a few lowlifes who might have heard something about a certain book. The criminals of Kirkwall disappoint you; you can see the ignorance in their eyes. No one has seen the damned relic.

Even Lady Elegant waves off your silver. “I’m sorry,” she says, and she sounds it, too. “I’ve kept my ear to the ground, but whoever has your relic is keeping quiet about it.”

“Balls,” you mutter, tucking your purse back into your boot. “If they have it, they might as well do something with it.”

“Perhaps they’re biding their time?” she suggests. “If you gave me a few more details…”

You repeat your lie for the hundredth time. “I never saw inside the box.” You’re disappointed, but not surprised. Perhaps you should try the beach where you washed ashore again; the lack of news may well mean that no one has found the damned thing yet.

Something bumps your elbow, hard enough to jostle you. Your hand is halfway to your dagger when Merrill squeaks, “Mythal! I’m so sorry, Isabela.”

Merrill backs up a step, ball of twine in her hands, eyes huge in her face. Lady Elegant covers her smile with a delicate hand.

“I nearly mistook you for a pickpocket, Kitten,” you sigh, letting go of your dagger. “A rather poor one, at that.”

“I would be, wouldn’t I?” She twists the ball in her hands, winding up the last of the twine. “I’m not sneaky at all, I’m afraid. I was just collecting this. Varric made me promise to use it whenever I wander out of the main markets.”

"You could always just bring me along," you offer. "I never get lost."

She perks up at this, face brightening with an eager smile. "Is that a common trait for pirates?"

You sling an arm around her shoulders and steer her toward the pie merchant, waving goodbye to Elegant. "The only one that matters," you confirm.

If only your possessions had as good a sense of direction.


	12. Foul Wind

You fall into a new routine, nearly as comfortable as the old: lunch with Merrill, cards with whoever's amenable, the occasional job with Fenris. Once or twice a week, you go to the Wounded Coast at dawn and scour the beaches until dusk, but you don't find box or book.

Perhaps it's lying at the bottom of the ocean, safe from the water in its locked chest, but utterly unreachable. The thought chills you. You're running out of time. Castillon has surely heard of your continued existence by now. If you don't have the relic by the time he comes calling…

You plant your ass in the sand, not far from where you washed up, and consider the little wreckage that you've found. Enough ships have met their end on this coast that the lost splinters of  _Siren's Call_  are indistinguishable from the broken bits of other vessels. You can pretend, though. You build a sad little boat in the sand, and when the tide comes in, you let the sea carry it away.

For a moment, you entertain the idea of running away: slipping out of Kirkwall in the dead of night, stealing a small ship, sailing off into the dawn. The dream dies before you can see it clearly. You have no crew, and besides, where would you go? You wouldn't be surprised if Castillon is watching for every stolen ship that isn't his. On the open sea, you'd be a perfect target.

You sit in the sand a long time, wishing for the horizon. You only return to Kirkwall when you're hip-deep in the surf, and the sea is threatening to carry you away, too.

At the Hanged Man, you find Hawke hammering on Varric's door, and you get the most peculiar feeling. The hair on the back of your neck prickles. You know something’s wrong; you just aren’t sure what it is yet.

Later, you’ll wish you could go back to this moment and stay here forever, safely in  _before_.


	13. Shambler

The next morning, you find Varric at the bar. “It was the darkspawn,” he says, already halfway into a mug of whiskey.

He looks nearly as bad as Hawke: ashen, gaunt. You've never met a problem that gold couldn't solve before, but this is it. For all the riches they brought back, it still wasn't worth it.

“Poor Bethany,” you sigh, dropping your face to your hands. Corff makes a sad, sympathetic noise, punctuated by the slop of porridge. You don't know a soul who didn't like Bethany. You bet even  _templars_ would like her, if they gave her five damn minutes.

“How's Hawke?” Varric asks, as though he's afraid of the answer.

“Awful." No point in dishonesty. “Hasn’t said a word since I first saw her. Cried herself to sleep. Nightmares woke her up.”

“Gamlen’s asking around for her.”

“Not her mother?”

“Her mother’s in the same state she’s in.”

“Don’t tell him,” you say. Your voice shakes with the anger filling up your bones. You haven’t felt this terrible since Casavir washed up dead. “She’s not in any state—“

“I know,” he says.

Corff hands over the bowls of porridge. Varric stays with his whiskey, and you return to Hawke.

She’s asleep in your bed, all tangled up in your blankets—a foot poking out there and an arm flung over the edge here, but otherwise wrapped around the worn quilt like a python. She starts awake and sits bolt upright when you put the tray down on your uneven table.

“Shh,” you say, like she’s a shy stray. “It’s only me.”

You can tell for a minute that she’s forgotten why she’s here, and it breaks the heart that you usually deny having. Her lips start to form a smile, sleepy blue eyes brightening at the sight of you. It turns your stomach—in a good way or a terrible one, you’re not sure yet. Even in that gaunt face, a smile looks nice on her. But then her eyes catch onto yours and her lips falter in their upward motion and she inhales sharply like she’s been struck, and then she’s falling out of bed in her haste to wrench herself free of the blankets and get to your privy. She’s throwing up whatever she ate yesterday only seconds later.

You hold her hair and rub her back until there’s nothing but dry heaving left. “You should have some water,” you tell her.

Her shoulders shake, and you’re not sure whether she’s crying or cold or both, but she doesn’t say a word. The porridge goes cold, and she doesn’t eat.


	14. Contagion

When Hawke finally starts to talk again, she talks about the estate.

The two of you go to the Wounded Coast and pick fights with raiders, and afterward, while her mabari plays in the surf, she builds little castles in the sand. Miniature, delicate things that won't survive the tide. A bit like her, right now.

"I've never had so much coin before," she muses, sparing half a glance for the loot you took off the dead bodies. Not a bad haul; the copper and silver glitters in the late afternoon sun. "I can't wait to see the look on Bran's face when I show him the purse."

"He might faint dead away," you agree, adding a single bit to one of her towers.

Twenty yards behind Hawke, someone staggers out of the bushes. You whistle, and she ducks, flattening herself into the sand. You throw your knife; he hits the ground, the sound too muffled to hear at this distance.

Hawke presses a finger into one of her collapsed towers, trying to shore it up after her elbow's attack. "He's twice as late now," she quips—a sad, earnest attempt at her former humor.

You groan, and she smiles, closing her eyes to the sun.

"You're not really going to leave me for Hightown, are you?" you tease her, flicking a bit of seawater at her face. "Whatever will I do without your terrible jokes?"

She dips her fingers in the incoming tide and does the same to you. "Have a round to celebrate, probably." She chuckles, but it cuts off abruptly, like every noise she makes now. "I just want to make Mother happy, you know?" she says, so quietly that you almost don't hear her above the hiss of the waves. "She's all I have left, and she hates Gamlen's house so much."

"And who wouldn't, really," you agree, but inside, your stomach roils. You think despair might be contagious, because your heart wrings itself to death these days when Hawke so much as blinks.

You will be glad to have your bed to yourself again, you tell yourself. You will be glad to drink again without worrying she’ll need you. You’ll be glad to have things back the way they were, without Hawke’s cold feet in the morning and her sudden cries in the middle of the night.

You will be glad, you tell yourself, and that’s that.


	15. Two Words

After Hawke moves away to her shambles of an estate, Leandra comes to the Hanged Man.

You watch her progress from your perch at the bar: her knotted hands, her furtive glances. Everyone knows she's Hawke’s mother, and so the worst they do is raise a glass to her. She nods to them, concealing her confusion behind a polite smile.

“Hello, Isabela,” she says when she reaches you. There are nerves in her fingers, but her gaze is steady on yours. “Is there somewhere we might talk?”

You're so perplexed by her appearance in your bar that you lead the way to your room. She sits in your single chair: properly, like a lady, her back straight and her ankles tucked against each other.

“I know Marian stayed here,” she says. “When she first came back from the Deep Roads.”

You raise one eyebrow.

“I wanted to thank you. She…needed a friend, and I was in no state.”

The second eyebrow joins the first. “ _You_ were in…?”

“We’ve lost so much,” she goes on, oblivious to your incredulity. “First Malcolm, and then Carver, and now…Bethany. My sweet little girl.” Her mouth trembles. “Gamlen keeps saying she could have survived, but…our luck hasn’t been good, these last few years. I fear the worst. I’m sure that’s why Marian hasn’t come home.”

You give a little squawk of outrage, a sound so foreign that you can’t believe you made it. Confusion has faded to anger. You slam your drink down so hard that Leandra flinches, startled from her grief.

“She was a wreck,” you say. Your voice is too loud. “You are her  _mother_. You’re supposed to take care of her.”

She smoothes her skirt, a little touch of fear in her eyes.

“Instead,” you go on, rising from the bed, “she’s been taking care of  _you_. For years, as far as I can tell. Now, I’m but a pantsless pirate, so you can go ahead and tell me I don’t know any better, but I would have cut you loose in the Wilds. But she didn't. She carried you and her sister and her brother, and she misses them all the time, and she misses her da, too, but she puts on a charade so that  _you_  won’t feel worse. She goes to the ends of the bloody  _world_ for you, and here you are, thanking me—a bloody  _pirate_ —for doing your job for you.”

Leandra looks heartbroken by this tirade, but she only says, “You’re the kindest pirate I’ve ever met.”

“Have you met many pirates?” you demand, hands on your hips. “Do you  _know_ what we do to nice old ladies like you?”

“Give us very stern lectures, apparently,” she says, getting to her feet. “I’m glad to know you care so much about her.”

“This isn’t about me,” you snap.

Leandra smiles—a wan thing, but so like Hawke that it makes you ache. “That’s not very pirate-like, is it?” she asks, but before you can retort, she continues, “You’re right. I’ve been…a terrible mother. I don’t know how I can set things right with her now.”

“All you can do is try,” you say. "You ought to do that, at least."

She bows her head; she leaves. You stay in your room with the last of your whiskey and go to sleep with her words echoing in your head.  _You care. You care. You care._


	16. South

You haven’t picked up a lover since Hawke came back to Kirkwall, but a month after she’s left your room, you reel one in.

He’s a sailor, and he’ll be gone in the morning. He’s not too muscled—just the right combination of lean and wiry. He smells like salt, he's deeply tanned all over, and he has a gold tooth that glints in the candlelight of your room.

He has stamina, this one. He holds your hips while he fucks you, with your ass spread over his thighs, and he does it just how you like when there’s a cock involved: not too fast, with the thick callous of his thumb pressing to your clit, paying mind to your pleasure. He works you until there’s sweat in his hair and your throat aches from the moaning.

It's a reassuring return to routine, and for a moment, you feel good as new—rid of your worry about Hawke and your anger with her mother both.

You see him off with the promise to entertain him next time he’s in town; he gives your ass a last fond pat in your doorway, and then he’s gone, tromping down the steps to drink at the bar.

Hawke sees it all from where she just stepped out of Varric’s room, and for once, there’s no smart remark on her lips or sly smile in her eyes. You’ve caught her by surprise, you and the sheet wrapped recklessly around your body, you and the hair pulled free of your bandana. Her pupils blow out, her red lips pop open in the tiniest of  _oh_ s, and you might have just had fantastic sex, but you could still pencil her in. You wink, to let her know.

But she just flushes, gives a quick, shy smile without meeting your eyes, and flees.

You'd love to know how far south that blush goes.

You close the door to your room and slip your fingers between your thighs, deep into soft folds still wet, and you think of her when you come.


	17. Soft

The first time you wake up in the Viscount’s Way after a bar fight, you’re only surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

The cot’s not too unpleasant. You’ve got your own cell. Someone even gave you a blanket—probably bleeding-heart manhands. She talks like she’ll kill you, but you’ve seen the worried wrinkle in her brow, even for you.

Sure enough, when you sit up and start digging around for your bandana—your hair is truly a bloody nightmare without that thing, especially right off in the morning—a throat clears outside your cage.

“I’m very sorry,” you say without looking up from your rummaging. “I’ll try not to do it again. No promises, though.”

The throat-clearer sighs. “A dozen men needed healing.”

“Only a dozen?” You chuckle, finally locating the bandana and tying it on. Your hair gets tucked securely beneath it. “I’m losing my edge.”

Aveline pulls open the door of the cell. “Hawke’s making you soft.”

You pause in the act of pulling on a boot. “ _Soft_? Hawke?”

Aveline leans against the door and looks at you, a certain iron in her terribly green eyes. “Hawke. You. Soft.” She waves a hand in your direction. “It all makes sense.”

“Except I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” Your head hurts a little. “What  _are_  you talking about?”

“You and Hawke. Together. Isn’t that what you’re getting up to, all those nights away from the estate? Leandra thinks that’s what she’s up to. She told me.”

“And Leandra knows exactly what goes on with her daughter, does she?” You pull on your other boot.

“You’re seriously telling me you two aren’t sleeping together? You flirt openly enough. You’ve kissed in front of all of us.”

“She’s a hard sell,” you protest. “I’m working on it.”

Aveline’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me.  _She_  won’t have  _you_? You’re pursuing her, is that it?”

“Not when you put it like that,” you grouse. “Look, I’d love to bed Hawke, but she’s had a lot going on, hasn’t she? I’m sure we’ll get to it eventually.”

“One of my guardsmen saw her at the Blooming Rose last night,” Aveline says casually, examining her fingernails. “Apparently she went to the Hanged Man first, but that was after your arrest.”

“Well, I hope she paid for the good stuff,” you say, winking, for what else is there to say? Sex is sex. You have no claim on Hawke. Trust Aveline to misunderstand that.

It’s too bad you missed her, though. Maybe you’d have had her, finally, and gotten it out of your system.

Aveline rolls her eyes, unaware of the disappointed turn your thoughts have taken. "You're incorrigible. Get out."

"Thanks for the blanket," you say, tossing it over her head as you leave.


	18. Window

You stand at the railing, safe in the shadows, and watch her dance with a prince.

It’s both where she belongs, and where she doesn’t. You love the sight of her in all that red—like fresh blood, it suits her—but you see her discomfort with the steps; Sebastian chuckles warmly when she steps on his feet. She dislikes the attention of the fawning nobles who would’ve spat on her without hesitation only weeks ago.

They ought to kiss her feet, beg for their lives. They pretend she’s like them—just another noble girl to wed—but there are knives hidden in her corset, strapped to her thigh. She could murder them without blinking.

The dress, though. The dress you like.

Everyone is here—everyone but you. You’re not dressed for it; you came in through the upstairs window. You got an invite, of course. It’s not Hawke’s fault you’re hiding in the shadows.

But you don’t belong down there, glittering at her side. You’re her companion in Kirkwall's darkest alleys, and you know better than to be otherwise. You are her escape route. That’s where you’re happiest, you tell yourself. You get the real Hawke, the street-smart woman who saved her family again and again, and no one can blame her for the times she failed. These nobles just get a pretender, a woman who grits her teeth through her smiles.

You like your Hawke better.

She glances around, clever blue eyes scanning the shadows, and for a moment, you imagine that she’s looking for you. Wondering where you are. You slap the thought from your head as soon as you realize you’re indulging it.

But when the dance is over, she curtsies to the prince—an awkward thing, as though not used to her heels—and then strides from the floor, pulling pins from her hair as she goes. She doesn’t catch her mother’s eye, and she doesn’t look up. You take a moment to admire her fantastic cleavage before you retreat to her room, your heart beating just a little harder.

If she wants to leave this terrible party, you'll be happy to show her the way.


	19. Poison

Bethany's alive, but Hawke never utters her name.

You write to the new Grey Warden, though. Sometimes just a scrap of words—a funny note about something Fenris did or Varric said—but sometimes whole letters, casual gossip about your companions. Sometimes you send these wrapped around a saucy book or two. The girl needs entertainment, where she's gone.

You take care not to let Hawke know, not that it would do any harm; Bethany never writes back to you, either. The few times her lips have spoken of her sister, though, you've seen the ugly wound left in Bethany's absence. Best to let some things be.

You're at the docks, penning one of these letters and gazing longingly at the sails, when Merrill stumbles upon you.

“I didn’t see you at the party the other night,” she says, sitting neatly beside you. Your legs swing from the dock; hers, she keeps tucked up beneath her. Your boots are off, and your toes just barely brush the water.

“I was there,” you say, your voice deliberately sly. “You just didn’t see me.”

Merrill blushes, lips curving automatically into a smile. “Is that why Hawke left, then? Ohhh, her mother frowned so. But she never said a word.”

“About time,” you mutter.

Merrill links her arm with yours. “So, did she leave with you? Are you two lovers now? Varric said you might be, but I can never tell. It’s better to ask.”

You laugh, charmed as ever by her bluntness. “Some might take offense, kitten, but no. Yes, she left with me, but we just went to clear out some thugs, make a bit of coin. She was feeling restless from the party.”

“Oh.” If you’re not mistaken, she looks a little crestfallen. “I think you’d be good together, you know. She’s always looking at you.”

Your stomach flops.  _Could be love_ , you think, not without irony.  _Could be food poisoning_. You ought to stop eating the odd stuff Corff cooks up. “A lot of people look at me,” you point out.

“Hawke looks at you  _differently_ , though. She gets…a look. It’s hard to describe.”

“Try to catch her at it,” you suggest, “and show me.” You pull Merrill to her feet. “Come on, I heard there’s a shipment of Orlesian hats around here somewhere, begging to be stolen.”

“You should get one for Hawke. She’d love it.”

Merrill’s like a mabari with a bone, sometimes.


	20. Spiders

Hawke is always finding jobs for you, so once in a while, you find one for her. There's a cave on Sundermount and a stash some drunkard in the Hanged Man has been raving about with your names all over it.

But when you open the box after half an hour of digging, there’s nothing there.

“Oh,” Merrill says, peering over your shoulder. “That’s disappointing.”

“Pfaugh,” Fenris spits. “Your contact is a fool, Isabela.”

“Aren’t they always,” you grumble, sifting through the dirt in the hopes of jewels, but there’s nothing in the box.

“Not to put a damper on the, uh, commiserating,” Hawke calls, “but we’ve got company.”

It's the worst kind of company, too: not fellow thieves, but  _spiders_. Great, hairy, gooey, leering spiders, all bearing down on Hawke, who drops a flask and backflips away from the smoke. Fenris charges forward, Merrill bellows a battle cry, and Hawke bumps her shoulder to yours.

“Ready?” she asks, already breathless.

“Sorry,” you mutter.

She flashes a bright smile sideways at you. “We’ve had worse.”

Of course, just to spite her good humor, one of the spiders blows out Hawke’s knee—the one she injured at Ostagar—and you’re all out of injury kits.

This can only end one way: with Fenris half-carrying Hawke back to Kirkwall while you and Merrill defend against the odd walking corpse or bloodthirsty spider, and nothing but a few bits and some slimy equipment for your trouble.

This has, of course, happened before. Even Hawke has followed leads to dead ends. You feel especially bad about it, though, seeing the way she sinks into her chair beside the fire, holding her knee like it will fall apart otherwise. Merrill runs to get Anders, Fenris returns to his estate, and you shuffle your feet in the doorway while Leandra cleans away the worst of the blood.

"I hope it was worth it," she scolds, but there's a note of humor in her voice that you've never heard before.

Hawke's eyes catch yours, crinkling at the corners. "These things seldom are," she says. "You should have seen the spider, though. Nearly as big as the ones in Lothering."

You leave them to their laughter, ducking into the library just as Anders comes in. To ease the headache that comes of listening to his lectures alone, you scribble a note before making your escape.

You don't bother asking forgiveness; she's already given that—as she always does—far too freely. Sometimes, you wonder if there's any misstep she won't forgive.


	21. Burst

After three years, you decide enough is enough.

At sundown, you take a bath, sluicing off the dirt of the last several days. You tie your hair beneath your bandana, tug on your boots, and blow out the lamp before you go. Varric emerges into the hall at the same moment you do.

"Interested in a round, Rivaini?" he asks.

You eye the table where a few of your companions are already gathered. Fenris nods to you. "Hawke isn't coming, is she?" you say.

Varric's brow furrows. "No. Something about turning in early."

"Perfect. Enjoy your game, boys." You hurry down the stairs before Varric can ask where you're going; he likes a good mystery, after all, and you wouldn't want to spoil it for him.

The walk to Hightown is quiet. You and Hawke have been working hard to clear out the gangs, and it shows; a few beggars hunch in the shadows, but no one attempts to accost you.

Bodahn lets you in. "Good evening, messere," he says. "I'm afraid my lady isn't home, but you're welcome to wait in the parlor."

"Thank you, Bodahn."

"I'll be in the kitchen, if you need anything. Just give me a shout."

He putters off, and you consider the low light of the fire, warming your chilled skin at the hearth. Your heart beats a little faster in anticipation. You don't suppose you'll have to do much to convince her. The only thing that has stopped this, after all, has been her hesitation—but if you're here and willing, if you make the first move, she'll crumble.

Later, when she half-drags you up the stairs and lifts you into her arms with a soft little grunt, when she kisses you with tongue and teeth, you'll think that  _crumble_ was the wrong word. When she cries your name with your fingers buried in her, you'll think that Hawke was an ocean locked up behind a dam. You'll relish your role in shattering stone, and you'll want to do it again.


	22. Games

Once you start sleeping with Hawke, you stop sleeping with anyone else.

It’s not really a conscious decision; it’s just that she’s a handful, really, and you’ve never been so satisfied. What’s better—she doesn’t demand a thing from you. She drops her quill when you swing in through her window and bears you happily to her big, comfortable bed, but when you go to leave, she doesn’t stop you.

Unless it’s for round two. Or six.

“Maker help me, but you’re good for her,” Aveline grouches one day, utterly out of the blue, while Hawke barters cheerfully with Tomwise. “Don’t screw it up.”

“The only thing I’m screwing is Hawke,” you reply. “I’m sure she’d be open to a third party, though. You want in, all you have to do is say.”

Aveline reddens. “No, thank you.”

“Of  _course_  not. You’re after that  _guardsman._ ”

“I ask Hawke for discretion, and she tells  _you_ about that business.” Aveline seems to be talking to herself rather than to you. It’s suitably entertaining.

“I had her at a disadvantage, if it makes you feel better. Hey, you ought to bring Donnic, too. We could put him to use.”

Slowly, Aveline lifts her heavily-armored hands and presses them firmly over her ears. It’s juvenile, but effective, you suppose.

“What’s wrong with her?” Hawke asks, juggling Tomwise’s poisons in her hands. You help her load up her pack, and she flashes a smile of gratitude at you.

Your stomach absolutely does not budge, and if it does, it’s because Corff did something funny with the stew again.

“Oh, I invited her and Donnic to our next tryst,” you say. Aveline presses her hands harder to her ears, though judging by the outraged twist of her mouth, she heard every word. “I think it embarrassed her,” you stage-whisper, and then, louder, “you don’t mind, do you?”

Hawke raises an eyebrow and pretends to consider it, casting a long, interested look at Aveline. You delight in the way she plays along with your game; it's hard not to clap your hands with childish glee. Aveline is now vivid as a sunset with indignation and turns her back on you both.

“I’d have to see her out of that armor first,” Hawke says at last, thoughtful.

Merrill, as though she can’t help it, lets out a breathless peal of laughter. Hawke links her arm through yours, grinning, as Aveline stomps off. “D’you think I upset her?” she asks.

“Pssh. Don’t be silly.” You tweak Hawke’s nose. “She’s just embarrassed that someone might find her  _attractive_.”

“She had a husband.”

“Mmm. Yes. Well, we all know that doesn’t necessarily  _mean_  anything.”

Hawke gives you an equally thoughtful look. “Right you are,” she agrees, cheerful as ever, and you don’t have time to think too long on that peculiar glimmer in her blue eyes.


	23. Shouldn't

The tension in the Dalish camp is thick, but Hawke browses Master Ilen's wares as though completely ignorant of the narrowed eyes. Beside you, Merrill twists her hands together.

“You’ve had many lovers, haven’t you?” she asks, her voice thin.

She's looking for a distraction, so you indulge her. Perhaps the Dalish will wander off if they overhear you talking about sex. “Fewer than some think,” you say.

“But you never stay with them.”

You pause, watching Hawke. Her ass looks good in her newest armor, and she’s in full swing, charming the pants off Master Ilen, who smiles and laughs while she chatters at him. Varric, a few feet away, clears his throat, casting you an oddly satisfied look.

“No,” you answer, turning to look at her wistful expression. “Why should I?”

She frowns. “But the act of lovemaking is so…intimate. How—”

“I don’t  _make love_ ,” you correct her, and it’s true. As fantastic as the sex is with Hawke, it isn’t love. It’s just two people, taking what they need. You have an accord. A wordless deal. You’re free to go when the sweat’s still fresh as long as you’ve left her hoarse. “What I do is only skin-deep,” you continue. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

“But you like Hawke,” she says slowly. “Don’t you? Why shouldn’t you make love to her?”

You laugh. You don’t know what else to do. Merrill is both naïve and perfectly logical. It’s true; you do like Hawke. She’s been a good friend to you. An ally. A soft laugh in the sheets, a sharp blade in the streets. Why shouldn’t you love her?

You don’t need to get her tied up in your mess, that's all. And that’s just what would happen if you did something as silly as love her—or, worse, if she did something as silly as love you back.

“Because we like what we have,” you say at last, and as though Hawke has heard your thoughts, she turns and throws a wink at you. You blow her a kiss back. Varric makes exaggerated retching noises. “And love is so complicated, Kitten. It’s not for me.” You can see she’s about to press the issue, so you turn it back, leaving the examination of Hawke and yourself behind. “Have you ever been in love? It’s grotesque.”

“I’d like to be,” Merrill says, a little sadly. “It sounds nice.”

You laugh, draping an arm around her shoulders. “Well, there’ll be someone if you want them, then. Who couldn’t love that face? You have a  _very_ pretty face.”

She brightens. She’s already forgotten about you and Hawke. “Do you think so?” she says, so hopefully.

“A lovely face,” you say, resolute, and the subject falls by the wayside.


	24. Just Rewards

“So, you knew Evets?”

“ _Knew_  Evets? Shit, I’ve  _slept_ with Evets.”

Hawke hikes the sheet a little higher on her chest. “You naughty pirate,” she says, and to your relief, she sounds more delighted than jealous. But why would she be jealous? Hawke isn’t the jealous type. You think Hawke could walk in on you fucking someone else in her bed, and as long as they were pretty enough, she’d ask to join in. “Why?”

You take another bite of pie with your fork. It’s the middle of the night, but Hawke can really test a girl’s stamina. The dessert is a necessity if you’re going to go another round.

“He tried to take my ship,” you say.

Her eyes widen. “He  _didn’t_ ,” she gasps.

“He did,” you say. “He came up alongside and boarded. This wasn’t long after Luis died, mind, and he thought that arse was still the captain. Surprised the shit out of him when I came out of the cabin, dressed in nothing but my smallclothes and brandishing daggers.”

Hawke puts her fork down, pie forgotten, and leans forward. The swell of her breasts presses against the sheet, and you think of tracing them with your fingers; she shivers just so when you do it lightly enough. “What did you do?” she asks.

“I dueled him,” you say, dropping your voice. “And when I’d bested him, I took him to my cabin and had my way with him, and then sent him back to his stripped ship with strict orders never to come within a league of  _Siren’s Call_  again.”

“And it worked?”

“Of course it worked,” you laugh, stealing the last bite of pie. “Wouldn’t you stay away, if I’d done that to you?”

She gets that terrible, thoughtful look on her face. It scares you, her looking like that. “No,” she says slowly. Your heart beats, too hard, against your ribs. “No, I’d come back for more. A duel by moonlight in smallclothes and then a rigorous shag? You couldn’t keep me away.”

You laugh. It sounds a little funny. “I should go,” you say, getting to your feet.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Hawke stands up, but she lets the sheet go. It puddles on the floor like blood. She intercepts your path to the door, backs you toward the table again. “You ate all of that pie, and I didn’t get any dessert. I think I deserve my just rewards, don’t you?”

She’s good, Hawke. Her voice makes you shiver. She gets her hands on your waist and puts you up on the table, there among the dishes and the wine glasses, and then she reaches around you for her glass and takes a deep drink. It stains her lips  _so_  red. You feel a little breathless with anticipation.

You can’t imagine why, only a few seconds ago, you wanted to leave so badly.


	25. Comfort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: All That Remains

You don’t go to the funeral.

You think that if Hawke had a choice, she probably wouldn’t, either. You know she presided over the burning of the body—just her and Gamlen—and that was probably nightmare enough. It wasn’t even all  _Leandra_ , after all. More like the funeral of four women, all lost to the pointless savagery of a man with too much power.

Aveline shows up at the Hanged Man the next day, her features stern as ever. You ready yourself for a good upbraiding, but she just settles in beside you and orders her own pint.

“Have you gone to see her?” she asks.

“No,” you admit.

“You should,” Aveline says. “Maybe she’d talk to you. Maker knows she’s not talking to any of us.”

You put your mug down. “Why is it always me?” you sigh.

It’s a rhetorical question—a whimsy complaint—but Aveline answers it, anyway. “She trusts you,” she says. “Andraste knows why,” she adds, as though she can’t help the jibe.

“She shouldn’t. I’m just after her gold and honor.”

“You don’t believe that,” she says. As though she  _knows_ you.

You go to the estate, and it’s not like after Bethany. Hawke doesn’t cry, not one drop. “Mother was all I had left,” she says, but she doesn’t say it like she’s whining. She says it like it's a simple truth, one that's already poisoned her heart.

But she’s wrong, and you want to  _tell_  her. You want to tell her that she puts your heart in your throat, and that when she’s down like this, all you want is to see her smile. You want to tell her that being wrapped around her is the closest you’ve ever come to comfort. You want to tell her that she has  _you_ , and you've opened your mouth to say it, but then—

You remember with a sickening swoop in your stomach that you’re still looking for the relic, and that when you find it, you’ll take it and leave her. You’ll skip out of Kirkwall and bend to Castillon and save your own skin, and she’ll never wonder where you went, because she’s smart enough not to give her heart to a pirate. Hawke isn't a fool.

“There are other people who care about you,” you say. It was right here, on this spot, that you told her that you wouldn’t do a thing for love. “Like…Aveline.”

She smiles at the joke. “Well, Aveline isn’t here,” she says, and even though she’s too pale and her eyes are red-rimmed, she still tries to sound coy. “So what are  _you_ going to do to comfort me, my dear pirate?”

You kiss her. She likes that, and if that’s all you can give her, you’ll give it.


	26. Belief

You wake to the sound of rustling, and for a long, panicked moment, you're disoriented. The red sheets are not yours, the bed is not yours, your daggers are not within arm's reach, and—

"Sorry if I woke you."

You turn toward the voice—Hawke's, which is something of a relief. She sits at her desk, adrift in paperwork, a cup of tea clutched in her hands. There's a chest at her feet and fabric trailing out of it in every direction.

"To be honest," she goes on, picking up a second cup, "I was so surprised to wake up and find you still here that I didn't know what to do. So, predictably, I didn't do anything." She crosses to the bed and holds the cup out to you with a rueful smile.

She hasn't slept easily since Leandra's death, and that's why you stayed. By the time you wore her out enough to sleep, it was nearly dawn, and you were exhausted yourself. Didn't seem like a catnap would do any harm, but the way the sun looks outside the window, you've slept until the afternoon.

Catnap, indeed.

You take the tea, because you don't know what else to do. "What's that?" you ask, nodding to the chest.

Hawke carries it over and drops it on the bed before crawling in beside you. "Napkins, I think." Her tone is dubious. "It was one of those old family things from the vault that Mother was going through."

You pull one out. Red, like the Amell crest, but with gold embroidery around the hem—fine stitching, if a little dusty. You dig around in the chest, but it's all the same, napkins and handkerchiefs all the way down.

"What do you do with so many napkins?" you muse.

Hawke snickers into her tea. "Throw very large dinner parties. Which are my  _favorite_ , as you well know."

You snap her in the arm with a handkerchief, and she yelps, half-juggling her tea. When she settles again, she continues, "I think I'll become the Hightown hermit, actually. Stop socializing with the neighbors. It'll add a little mystery to the place."

"I don't think that would suit you, Hawke."

"No?" She gives you a thoughtful sideways look. "What would?"

For a moment, you're tired enough to return to the thoughts you've entertained all week. You consider telling Hawke the truth about the relic, trusting her to help you reclaim it, trusting her to watch your back when you hand it to Castillon. You think of telling her that she'd make a fearsome pirate.

But you've time, yet. You can linger here a little longer, waiting for a scent of the relic before you make your move.

"Lowtown," you declare. "You ought to move back to Lowtown."

She rolls her eyes. "My sense of smell has only  _just_ begun to return to me."

"With the way this city smells, that seems a disadvantage."

She laughs, leans down to press a kiss to your hair, and for a moment you let yourself believe with wholehearted stupidity that she'll say  _yes_.


	27. Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quest tag: To Catch A Thief

You finally get wind of the relic's whereabouts, and then, just as suddenly, Seamus Dumar is dead.

It’s all happening too fast. You have to confront Sam, but you know that too many buyers will be there for you to contend with alone. This isn’t how you planned it. You were going to win Hawke over, tell her the truth on your own terms, and now the city boils on the brink of war and you don’t have time. You don’t have time, and Castillon will kill you if you falter.

You were going to tell her. You were going to tell her, but it’s too late now.

She doesn’t bat an eye when the qunari confront you in the foundry district. She doesn’t even seem surprised that you knew what the relic was, all along. It’s like she knew you were keeping something from her, and she doesn’t even  _care_.

It's too little, too late, but you tell her everything. She hears you out with a soft look on her face, and before you can worry that she'll tell you to give the relic to the Arishok, she says, "It's yours. Your life depends on it."

And you can hear it in her voice, how much she values your life; it guts you, her easy acquiescence, while Aveline fumes beside her and even Merrill can only look at you with shock.

She hasn’t said the words, but you can see them in her eyes. She’ll say them soon enough, if you give her the chance, and you can’t. If she says she loves you, you’ll stay. You’ll stay, and get her caught up in this awful mess, and when she’s dead at your feet, you’ll regret it. You will regret that you did a single damn thing for love.

So you leave Hawke to deal with the buyers and chase Sam instead. You kill him before he can beg for his life. At the back of the Tome, there are empty pages; while the sounds of fighting go on inside the foundry, you write, using the blood on the ground and the tip of your knife to tell her the truth. A piece of it, anyway. You're sure she'll know what you mean. Hawke isn't a fool.

The instant the foundry goes quiet, you run. You tell yourself not to look back, because you know exactly what will happen if you do.


	28. Salvation

You’re halfway to Ostwick before you realize the problem: the qunari aren’t following.

You see the gaping hole in your plan. You assumed that Hawke, at her wit’s end, would tell the Arishok that  _Isabela has the damn relic, go get it from **her** , _and that would be that. The qunari would leave in hot pursuit.

But what if Hawke didn't tell him? What if, in a last misguided attempt to protect you, she lied about the Tome of Koslun? What if, in a fit of rage at Hawke’s insolence—for surely the Arishok knew the truth, regardless—he finally tore Kirkwall apart board by board, and Hawke with it?

On the second day, you see smoke on the horizon behind you.

You don’t put much thought into what comes next. You steal a traveler’s horse, tuck the damned book into the saddlebag, and you ride for your life back to Kirkwall. If the city is burning, you must be too late, but you have to  _try_. You can't seem to turn the damned horse around and flee.

In Lowtown, the bodies of Kirkwall's guards and the qunari alike are scattered in the streets. Citizens kneel in the dust, huddle outside the Hanged Man, and Hawke's name is on their lips. "She saved me," more than one of them cries, sobs, whispers. "Thank the Maker."

You grab one of them by the shoulder. "Which way did she go?"

She points at the bridge to Hightown, her finger shaking. "Andraste guide her," the girl says, eyes huge in her face. "She followed the Arishok."

You run. You leave the horse with the girl and take the stairs to the bridge two at a time. When your boots hit those cobbled streets, you follow the sound of her name. You pass by the templars fighting out in front of the Viscount's Keep and climb to the roof instead, the Tome tied up safely in your sash. When you've scrambled past the skirmish, you start looking for a window.

The office you break into is the Viscount's. You came here with Hawke once, when she returned Seamus Dumar to his father. It's cold and dark now, broken glass all over the floor, the chair tipped sideways, paperwork swept from the desk.

You follow the sound of fear, and when you throw yourself against the door to the throne room, all the nobles scuttle back. Hawke turns, paying no mind to the Arishok glowering down at her, and when her eyes catch on you, she smiles.


	29. Immovable

You hand the Arishok the Tome like it's nothing—like it's already forgotten—but he won't, of course, let you go that easily.

Hawke puts herself in front of you, as though she can stop him. “She stays with us,” she declares, so  _sure_ of herself, and for a moment, you think he'll bite.

"Did you know that you puff up like a bird when you're being all protective?" you mutter.

The corner of her mouth twitches up.

The whole thing goes south after that, of course. She’s going to  _duel_ him. She’s going to go up against that axe and that sword and  _that_ , the head of the military arm of the qunari, she doesn’t know what she’s doing—

“If you’re going to duel anyone, duel  _me_ ,” you demand, but he doesn’t so much as look at you.

“She alone is basalit-an,” he says.

Hawke pushes, trying to get you out of the way, but you don't budge. If you don't move, he'll be forced to go through you to get to her—but then Aveline has a vice grip on your arm and drags you away, toward the whispering and crying crowd.

“He’s going to kill her,” you say, trying to break free of her grasp. They’re clearing the floor. The qunari stand guard around the perimeter. She looks too small, facing him. She’s slightly wilted on one side, like she’s already favoring a wound. “He’s going to kill her—”

You've never seen Aveline's face so white, like bone. “No, he isn’t,” she says, but she’s never sounded less sure.

“Let me go.” You don’t recognize your own voice.

Aveline shakes her head, holding your hands firm. “You interfere, they’ll kill us all,” she says. “Is that what you came back for?”

When the duel starts, Hawke does a lot of running.

She has to. She has daggers and speed; he has an axe, a sword, and unstoppable force. The fight goes on forever. Perhaps this is your penance, to stand here and watch for eternity as he wears her down.

He  _is_  wearing her down. He’s fresh; he came here with an entourage of guards who protected him from the fighting—but she didn't.

Her rolls and backflips become sloppier. She only sticks half the landings. She stumbles on the rest, barely wrenching herself out of his sword’s path.

They’re both bloody. The next strike would end it, but—

She stumbles, and this time, she doesn’t recover fast enough. He makes one clean thrust with his sword and lofts her into the air. You see her hands uselessly gripping the blade, trying to push herself off.

Someone is screaming her name. It’s only when Aveline wraps both her arms around you to hold you back that you realize it’s you.


	30. Heart

She is on the ground. She stirs, but not quickly enough. “Hawke,” you cry. “Hawke, Hawke,  _Hawke!_ ”

He lifts his axe to finish the job, as if there was a job to finish. He could let her lie there for thirty seconds and she’d be dead.

But just as he pauses in his swing, she surges up. Her knife hits home in his neck. As soon as his body hits the floor, she collapses, too.

Aveline lets you go. You surge forward just as the Knight-Commander and her templars burst into the room, but Aveline heads her off, speaking quickly. The nobles don’t cheer. You kneel at her side, lean down to hear if she still breathes.

When you look up, Varric is standing across from you, staring at the wretched hole in her armor. You grab his coat. "Where is Anders?" you demand, your throat aching.

"He wasn't with us. Lowtown, probably—"

"Get him," you say, speaking over the whimper of pain below you, "and meet me at the estate." When you let go of his coat, you give him a little push. " _Hurry_."

He goes. You get an arm around Hawke's shoulders, coaxing her up, and press your free hand to the bloody wound. Your stomach wrenches at the way it moves.

“Come on,” you say, and she moves her feet a little. “We’ve got to hurry. Don’t you dare die on me now, Hawke. Don’t you  _dare_.”

On the steps outside, her knees buckle, so you pick her up and carry her. By the time you burst into her estate, Bodahn and Orana have laid out a pallet in front of the fire, and Anders is already there.

“Maker,” he says, like the word is a curse.

You lay her down. She bleeds through the pallet almost immediately. “Just fix her,” you beg him. “Please, please fix her.”

Blue coronas form around his hands. He holds one to the hole in her middle. “He missed her spine,” he says, his mouth a grim line, “but it’s going to be close. Hold her still.”

You pull her a little closer, her head resting on your thigh, your hands on her shoulders. Her eyes open at the movement; they struggle to focus, fixing on your face one moment and darting away the next.

“Always…knew…you had a heart of…gold,” she chokes out.

Her words are mangled. You’re crying; you can feel the tears on your cheeks, dripping down your face like a flood. “I did it for you,” you tell her, so angry that she can’t  _see_ , but if she dies, she has to at least go knowing that no matter what mess you made, you did it for her and no one else. “It was always about  _you_.”


	31. For Love

You can hear Anders snoring out on the landing.

The house is otherwise silent. The servants are all, finally, asleep. Hawke's friends have been in and out for the last several hours, but you haven’t looked one of them in the face, not even Merrill, who sat down next to you at Hawke’s bedside and pressed her cheek to your shoulder and told you how relieved she was that you'd come back.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

You don’t look up. That  _sounds_ like Aveline, but it can’t be Aveline. Aveline will see you hanged for this.

“How do you figure that?” you ask, holding a little tighter to Hawke’s limp hand.

Aveline squeezes your shoulder with calloused fingers. “It’s your fault that half the city is still on fire,” she says, blunt as ever. “It’s your fault the qunari were here for three years. But it isn’t your fault that she dueled the Arishok. That’s  _her_ fault.”

“She wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for me.”

“She made her choice. She couldn’t let you go.” Her hand falls from your shoulder. “What does Anders say?”

“She’ll live. She needs to sleep it off. He isn’t sure when she’ll wake.” You duck your head, looking away from her still face.

“You’re not leaving,” Aveline says. There’s an incredulous question in that sentence somewhere. “If you love her, you can’t leave. Not now.”

“If I love her,” you say. Your voice is thick, like it’s been all night. You haven’t cried so much since your mother sold you for a goat and a few coins. “If I love her, I  _have_ to leave.”

“She’ll try to find you,” she insists. “She’ll follow you.”

“You don’t know Hawke,” you say. “She’s good at letting go of the things she loves. She’s had a lot of practice.”

You rise from your chair; Aveline makes some noise behind you, but you ignore her, leaning down to whisper in Hawke’s ear. She won’t hear you, but you have to say it, anyway. “I’ll miss you,” you tell her, and press an awfully wet kiss to her forehead. “I’m sorry, sweet thing.”

You pull your bandana from your hair, leave it folded in her fingers, press it to her heart.

“Isabela.” Aveline sounds suspiciously teary—still angry, but so waterlogged that you almost can't tell.

“It’s better for all of us,” you say, and before she can mount a new argument, you run for the window. You snatch one of those ridiculously red handkerchiefs on your way out.


	32. Sentiment

You go north, though you know it’s a risk.

You could charter a ship—you have gold enough—but you stick to the land. You are a target at sea, a spot of something amidst nothing, and it will be easier to evade Castillon on his own streets than on the ocean.

Pity. You haven’t been at sea in three whole years. You would have liked to smell the salt air again, hang from the shroud as your crew took you away.

But you have no crew. You have gold, but not enough to hire the hands you’d need to sail.

So you borrow another horse and change your clothes. You’ve lost the bandana already, but you need more than that. You pack away your sash and jerkin and buy tan trousers and a billowy white shirt. You braid your hair back, the way you once wore it for Luis, and tuck it beneath the bright red handkerchief you took from Hawke.

It’s horrible. It's sentimental, is what it is, but for once, you’re inclined to indulge. You’ve never felt so adrift, like your insides have been cut out and left behind you.

You decide that, while you're being sentimental, you might as well return to Llomerryn. You’ll ride up, straight through Antiva, and cross the land bridge into Rivain. From there, you’ll go south, take the ferry.

You turn your mount  to look back at Kirkwall from your vantage point on the Wounded Coast. Your horse whickers softly beneath you, sensing your unease. Not for the first time in these last few days, your eyes are wet.

Three years ago, you washed ashore here. You wish you were leaving the same way. If you’d had time, maybe you’d have even convinced Hawke to come away with you. You think she’d be a good pirate.

Your lips twist; you brush your knuckles across your eyes. You’ll never know now, you tell yourself, and that is for the best.

You follow the coastline. The gulls keep you company. You don’t use your voice for days at a time. You pass by settlements and cities; you forgo warm taverns and half-foul stew. Instead, you go fishing with your trousers rolled up to your knees.

If the sea is angry with you, she gives you no sign. The kiss of her waves is as fond as ever, cool and sharp against your calves. You stand in the water until your toes go numb and your horse looks on the verge of coming out after you. You stole the poor creature, but she seems sort of attached to you.

“Be careful,” you warn the mare, tossing a pear across the fire. She eats daintily, huffing her approval. “Last person who got attached almost paid for it with her life.”

You don’t sleep well. You get into your bedroll and can’t find the Fade no matter how you try, and once you’re there, what once was dark and deep and easy has gone sour. There’s the slick warmth of blood on your hands, and you hear Hawke crying your name, and sometimes...Maker, you still hear her screaming.


	33. Luck

A month later, you stand on the outskirts of Antiva City.

You pull a hood over your face and lead your horse inside its walls. You find a tavern and stable on the outskirts, eat tavern food for the first time in a month, and try to make yourself comfortable on a bed stuffed with straw. It’s hard work. You’ve gotten used to the firm, unyielding nature of sand, and all the noise unnerves you.

You finally drift off, only to wake to the knowledge that someone is in your room.

For a terrible second, you are more hopeful than frightened. Your heart swells. You think that Hawke must have gotten well and followed you. She could, after all. She’s a wonderful tracker. And she’s found you, and she’s about to drag you back to Kirkwall, and she won't hear  _no_ for an answer.

Your common sense kicks in after that single paralyzing second, and you reach for your daggers.

“You’re lucky it was me who found you,” the voice in the shadows says, “and not Castillon.”

You sit up, letting the sheet fall away. In the dim light of the fire’s embers, you see the outline of a pointed ear, the dark wave of a tattooed cheek.

“Zevran,” you say.

“It is not safe for you here.” He turns toward you with a frown.

“I know.” You swing your legs out of bed. “Last I checked, it’s not safe for  _you_ here, either.”

He waves this off. “I’ve divided the Crows. It is only a matter of time, now. I am safe enough.”

“I might ask for a protection detail, then,” you joke. It’s feeble, and you both know it.

He sits down beside you. “ _I_  might ask what you’re doing so far from Kirkwall.”

You fold your hands together in your lap. “I tired of it.” Your voice rings with false cheer. “It was time to move on.”

He touches your wrist. “Pirate wench.” His voice is fond. “Do you think you can lie to me? I only have half a guild of assassins, but I have eyes in Kirkwall. I know what happened with your Hawke.”

Your heart jumps to your throat. Before you can think better of it, you blurt, “Is she still alive?”

“Alive, indeed. She woke two weeks after your departure. She's now Champion of that wretched place.” He offers you his hand, and after a second’s hesitation, you take it, squeezing it tight. “Isabela, my dear, what happened to you?”

"What _didn't_ happen to me?" you say, and then, because he is your last and oldest friend, you tell him everything.


	34. Worth

“How did you do it, Zev?” you ask him, with Hawke’s handkerchief balled up in your fist and damp from crying. “When you fell in with your Warden after all that…all that madness that happened with Rinna. How did you let all that  _go_?”

He squeezes your hands. “Slowly. Painfully.” He chortled. “She was—is—so patient with me, yes? Otherwise we would have gotten nowhere. Eh, what do I know of love, even now?”

“More than me. Balls, I've made a mess of things."

His eyes drift toward the fire—further than that. “She saw someone worth saving,” he says. “Eventually, she made me see that, too. Perhaps your Hawke is the same way. She sees something better in you than you thought of yourself.”

“She didn’t even have the decency to look surprised when I showed up,” you say, your voice cracked with a laugh or a sob—you’re not sure which. “Like she was expecting me. She was a fool.”

“But you showed, didn’t you?” He laughs. “More the fool you, then, for not knowing yourself.”

“I’ll just hurt her,” you say, twisting the handkerchief in your hands now. “If I’d stayed…I would have just gotten tired of her, eventually. Been resentful that she was holding me down.”

“Do you really believe that? I do not know Hawke, but she does not  _sound_ like a fishwife."

“No,” you say miserably. “That’s worse. She would bend backwards to make it work for me and sacrifice all her comfort for it. How could I live with myself? And there's still Castillon.”

“It sounds like she would fight far greater foes than some merchant prince for you. What’s Castillon to the Champion of Kirkwall?”

“Not her problem, that’s what.”

Zevran  _tsks_. “You did not used to be so terrible at accepting help, my dear.”

You smile, a watery thing, and rest your head against his shoulder. “I paid you. It was easier. Hawke doesn’t want my gold. She just wants…me. What for, anyway?”

“That, you would have to ask her,” he says, gentle but firm, and you bite your tongue on  _How?_


	35. Alone

Zevran sees you safely out of Antiva City in the morning, and does not ask where you're going.

You meander for a few weeks, because you don't  _know_  where you're going anymore.

A band of raiders catches you just outside of Treviso. You miss Hawke even more fiercely during the battle; your skills did not rust during the years you fought at her side, but you’re now more used to brawls than duels. You miss her cheerful shout as she lobbed grenades overhead; you miss Merrill’s gasp when she accidentally clipped you with a flying boulder; you miss Aveline’s heavy hand on your shoulder, her loose grin after battle, the way she congratulated you all on a job well done.

Now it’s just you and these louts. You have to work a lot harder for it, calculate your strikes lest they stick a knife in your kidney when you aren’t looking. There’s no one watching out for you, here.

You can’t believe it, but you got  _used_ to that, to having someone look out for you.

It’s worse when you loot the bodies and learn that they are Castillon’s men. He has heard that you’ve departed from Kirkwall; he knows that you are vulnerable.

At last, you are firmly decided. You cannot go back to Kirkwall. You will not run and hide in Hawke’s skirts. You will handle Castillon yourself, and only then will you take a ship and go home.

You’ll have something to offer her, then. Not a wanted pirate, but a free woman. It’s the best you can do, and Hawke deserves better, but Zevran was right. She’ll smile at the offer like it’s a pile of dwarven gold, and you’ll just have to hope that she never comes to her senses.


	36. Ghost

You actually get  _seasick_ on the ferry to Llomerryn.

You think the sea must be laughing at you. You’re down in the hold, of course, with all the other cattle, and as you once told Merrill, you really need to see the horizon to avoid vomiting. You are not so lucky on this journey. You throw up the contents of your stomach like every other miserable wretch down here and pray for shore.

Llomerryn is as you remembered it, and not. These cities are always changing. You walk by the market stall where you were sold and there is a shopfront there now, instead. It is almost unrecognizable; you think you have the wrong place, at first, and are baffled that you have forgotten such a defining moment of your own history. It makes you a little panicky until the light changes and you see it for the place it was.

“Naishe,” you murmur under your breath, like a prayer, and you have a look at the beautiful jewels being sold there now. You might even come back and filch one later. You know. For luck.

There’s a rundown inn not far from that spot. It’s been repurposed, and has a barn attached. You stable your mount—the poor creature is exhausted after the boat ride—and make your way inside, pulling your hood from your head.

The woman near the kitchen looks up when the door opens, and for a moment, the sunlight washes over her face. It’s like looking in a mirror that ages you twenty years, gives you the wrong nose and mouth but the exact right eyes.

For a moment, you consider turning and leaving. Of all the people in Llomerryn—and there are quite a few—of course, you would walk into the inn where she works. Of course she is still here. Of course her promises to run off to Par Vollen were empty threats—

But they weren’t, of course, and it isn’t her: just a trick of the light. Your lungs deflate inside you, as though a knife has found its way in. You don’t know what you’d say to your mother if you  _did_ meet her. Now is certainly not a good time for it.

For a moment, though, you imagined comfort. You remembered a woman who tried, so hard, to reconnect to a child she’d pushed away. You wished it could be yours.


	37. Charm

You remember when you first met Hawke: a starving refugee, and she somehow managed to feed herself and her family, all by killing some spiders and chatting up people in the streets.

Well,  _you_ can do that. And the people of Llomerryn are a lot chattier than the people of Kirkwall. It’s a thriving city, full of that peculiar joy that comes of living through a night thick with violence.

You’re just not sure how Hawke  _found_ the people she got work from. You know Varric used to give her leads, but those made up the tiniest percentage of your many jobs.

You decide to wander the markets. Every now and then, you hear a voice that sounds like one of them: Merrill’s excited gasp, Varric’s hacking laugh, Hawke’s cheerful jesting. The sharp pain in your chest has faded to a dull ache, but you still turn at every sound, wondering if they’ve followed you, what you’ll do if they have.

And then, you see her: a lost-looking soul standing just inside the shadow of a market stall, wringing her hands and glancing furtively down the nearest alley.

“Hello, sweet thing,” you say, kindly as you can, and her chin jerks up, terrified eyes meeting yours. “Do you need help?”

“N-no,” she stutters, taking a pace back. “No, thank you, I’m all right.”

“You look worried,” you coax. “Are you sure?”

She crumbles. This, you remember: Hawke patting the shoulder of some inconsolable citizen, listening sympathetically to their plight.

“It’s my little brother,” she whispers. “He’s been kidnapped. He—he vanished right from this spot three days ago, and I haven’t been able to find him, and they’ve left a  _ransom_ , and—”

“Slow down,” you say, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Isabela’s here. Tell me everything.”


	38. Trespass

After two years, a missive arrives from Kirkwall. It is not from Hawke.

_Isabela—_

_I’m getting married in a month, and I’d like you to be here._

_Hawke’s estate, the eleventh of Harvestmere._

_Aveline_

The missives you usually receive are signed  _Z_. They give you locations, numbers. You have only received half a dozen such letters. Half the time, you arrive too late to confront Castillon. Sometimes, you catch a glimpse of him, surrounded by too many guards for you to handle on your own. You sit on the rooftop or stand in the shadows, imagining what Hawke would say if she were there.  _We can take them_ , she would whisper, words twisting with her eager smirk.

You are no closer to killing the bastard, and all you want is to go home.

You don’t attend in the way Aveline intended, but you  _are_  there. You sit deep in the shadows of Hawke’s roof, watching the ceremony in the garden from afar. From up here, you can’t hear anything but snatches of the words, but you get the message well enough.

Aveline beams. Donnic never once looks away from her. Fenris is his best man, Hawke Aveline’s maid of honor. There are marigolds in her dark hair. The last time you saw her, she looked on the brink of death, but now she is warmed by the sun, the lightest of freckles spattered across her nose, a bouquet overflowing in her hands. She smiles, and though it barely warms her eyes, it does not look false.

When the words are done, they small group rises and follows the happy couple into the house. Fenris and Anders don't have a single unkind word for each other. Varric makes a joke, and Sebastian laughs. Merrill adjusts the marigold in Aveline's hair; the two women smile at each other.

Sometimes, you just miss Hawke, but now your heart aches for all of them, for the three years of laughter and feuding and drinking and friendship. You almost can't believe you've gone so soft.

Hawke hangs back a moment when they've all gone in, lingering barely twenty feet below you. She considers the flowers in her hands, brings the bouquet to her face, closes her eyes—and then, just as suddenly, she opens them, frowning up at the roof.

For a moment, you’re certain she sees you. She squints into the sun, exactly in the direction of your shadowy hideout. You think of showing yourself, of sheepishly clambering down from the roof and presenting yourself to her—

But she looks away, follows the others inside.

You sit on her roof until dark, and you wish you could stay.


	39. Uncertainty

Once in a while, you sneak into Antiva to meet with Zevran.

Always at the same place, though never on the same day of the week, or at the same time. He tells you what he knows of what is happening in Kirkwall. He tells you whether or not Hawke is safe.

"She does like to tempt fate," he tells you, raising his mug to his lips. "This habit she has of sitting alone on the coast. Madness. That hound will not save her."

"But she's fine," you press.

"If you do not trust me, perhaps you should go see for yourself." He smirks. "Pining does not suit you, my dear. It is obvious that she misses you. I have been in touch with the most  _delightful_ dwarf—"

"You didn't tell him," you say, fingers gone numb around your mug.

" _Brasca_. I am not an amateur. He thinks that her sister is keeping an eye on her."

You sigh—a long breath that is almost relieved, and almost disappointed.

"It is obvious that we are not equipped to finish off Castillon," he says. There is a harder glint in his eyes now. "I cannot help but think that you know this, and are simply stalling."

"Perhaps Llomerryn has grown on me."

"Perhaps you are a thief and a liar," he dismisses. "Perhaps you will also be a  _dead_ thief and a liar if you go on like this. He will not let you be forever. Better to have your Champion at your back when he comes calling. No one knows better than you what he is like."

"She'll think that I'm using her." There is anger in your voice, and nothing but despair in your chest. "That I'm hiding behind her like I did with the qunari, and that I'll run off again as soon as she's solved my problems for me."

He raises his eyebrows. "Then perhaps you should not have waited so long."


	40. Home

One year later, you leave Llomerryn.

You are tired, angry, and worn down. Despite your many forays into Antiva, you have not come close to Castillon. (You have come close to a knife in the back, though, countless times.) You have admitted, however pointlessly, that if you are waiting to kill Castillon, you may never return to Kirkwall.

You can no longer stand the idea of it. You have to at least  _see_  Hawke. If she’s moved on, then you won’t stay. Perhaps you’ll go west. Forget Castillon, lose him in your dust. Wander forever on the mare you call Naishe and only fight erstwhile bandits for the rest of your days.

You spent months in the leaving; it is only a few weeks to journey back. You take the swiftest route. You do not meander. Your mare grows disgruntled with you, unused to the quick pace.  _What’s your hurry?_ she asks with every snort.

“If horses understood homes, you wouldn’t ask me that,” you mutter. You give her a pear for her troubles.

You arrive at the Hanged Man to a great commotion inside, and when you duck in, no one notices you. They’re all too busy watching Hawke take on some thug a few times her size, cheering and booing by turns.

There’s the prettiest sneer you’ve ever seen splashed across her lips. She looks harder than you remember her, leaner, a little crueler—or perhaps you’ve just forgotten. The idea pains you. She’s in a corner, and she looks like she could use some help.

You whistle, and she drops—just like that. You throw your dagger and the lout goes down, hitting the sticky floor beside her.

When she looks up at you, all that hardness in her face melts away. Her mouth crooks into the tiniest of flabbergasted smiles.


	41. Missed

You suspect that no one has lived in this room for the last three years. You can’t prove it, but the Hanged Man is usually full up, and Corff handed over the key without grumbling about kicking out the last tenant. You wonder if it was Varric or Hawke who paid to keep it open; you decide that knowing wouldn’t help.

Varric comes by while you unpack your saddlebags. He watches you unwrap the ship in a bottle Hawke gave you all those years ago; you put it down next to the lamp, turning it so the glass catches the light.

“How was Llomerryn?” he asks at last, a new note of wariness in his voice.

You glance up. He’s frowning, eyes narrowed just slightly. Not quite angry, but wary, at least. It’s better than you expected—better than you deserve.

“Wretched,” you reply. “ _You_  aren’t supposed to know about Llomerryn.”

He glances at your single chair. You nod, and he sits, perching right at the edge. “I knew the information would stop coming if you knew that  _I_ knew.”

“Zevran will be heartbroken that you tricked him. How  _did_ you trick him?”

“Please,” he scoffs. “I have my own eyes and ears. Once I knew someone was asking, I just had to follow the breadcrumbs.” He considers his gloves while you rifle through the rest of your possessions. “But maybe my information wasn’t as good as I thought it was. As far as I know, Castillon is still alive.”

You go still. “You’re not wrong.”

“And you’re here.”

You have nothing to say to that. Luckily, Merrill arrives to save you from having to say anything at all. You hear her quick footsteps before she even reaches the door, and then she stands there, quivering, her braids in disarray, her eyes round as saucers.

“Isabela,” she squeaks, as though she doesn’t really believe you’re here.

You put on a smile for her. “Hello, Kitten.”

She darts forward to hug you, already babbling, and hits you with the force of a mabari. “Varric sent someone to tell me, and I almost didn’t  _believe_ them, but Varric wouldn’t lie about something as important as that, and—I can’t believe you’re here! Like you never even left!”

When you pull back from Merrill, Varric is gone. “It certainly feels like I left,” you tell her, sitting down on the bed. “Somehow I expected you to be angrier that I didn’t write.”

She sits down beside you. “Pirates don’t write letters. I just missed you.”

It is a surprisingly sad thing, you think, to be missed.


	42. Regret

“I brought your bandana.”

This is the second time that Hawke has casually tried to talk to you at the bar. The first time lasted five minutes before you made up some excuse and ran off, your stomach in knots. You can hardly look at her. You look at her hands instead, where the old blue bandana is neatly folded, recently washed, the gold embroidery as bright as ever.

“Orana helped restore it a bit,” she explains, holding it out to you. “She’s better with a needle than I am. I thought you might like it back.”

You take it. It’s soft, familiar. You reach up and pull the red handkerchief from your hair, hesitating only a second before holding it out to Hawke.

She doesn’t take it. When you look up at her at last, she’s shaking her head. “Keep it,” she says, a sad smile on her face. “In case you need a spare.”

You tuck your hair back beneath your old blue bandana and fold the red handkerchief into your sash. Corff brings over a mug for Hawke, and the two of you drink in silence. You remember this, a near-nightly tradition, back when your elbows and shoulders touched and her eyes sparkled when she looked at you. Now she looks at her drink, her breath hitching once in a while like she’s about to say something, but she doesn’t.

You wish she would. If she would just ask the question, you would answer. You wouldn’t be able to help it. But she doesn’t, and at the end of the night, she gives you a smile and nod and leaves without another word.

You stand at the bar a while longer, handing coppers over to Corff until you’re more  _leaning_ against the bar than  _standing_ by it. When your head has sunk down to your hands and you can’t quite feel your elbows, someone clears his throat beside you.

You glance up. It’s Fenris, an unusually neutral expression on his face.

“Are you going to tell me off?” you sigh. “You should. I keep waiting for someone to do it, but no one seems to want to.”

His mouth quirks in the smallest of smiles. “Would it make you feel better?” he asks, waving Corff over.

You put your face back in your hands. The dark is nice. “It’s worth a try.”

“Running away was selfish.”

“I know.”

“Your thievery killed hundreds of people.”

“I know.”

“Hawke has been unbearable since you left.”

“Really?”

“You sound suspiciously hopeful for someone who ought to be contrite.”

“I am historically bad at contrition,” you mutter.

Fenris shrugs, dropping the stern tone. “Perhaps you should give it up, then.”

Perhaps you should.


	43. Forgive

After a few more weeks of sulking in the Hanged Man, after a few more awkward conversations, after too many sleepless nights alone, you go back to Hawke.

She lets you in, just like that. She doesn’t make you promise to stay. She doesn’t ask anything of you at all. She takes you into her bed like you never left.

Aveline is not nearly so forgiving, and you’re not even trying to  _sleep_ with her.

“I’m not Hawke,” she says. She doesn’t even look up from the paper she’s signing. “I won’t be won over by a single bloody whistle.  _Maker_.”

She bites her lip on a harder curse and keeps writing. You sit down in the chair in front of her desk, feeling an awful lot like a school girl who’s been called in for reprimanding. A silly thing to feel. You’ve never  _been_ a school girl.

You cast around for something that might diffuse her irritation. “I was at your wedding,” you say at last. “You looked very nice.”

She pauses mid-word and glances up. She has new lines around her mouth—the wear of a handful of happy years, you think, not like Hawke’s. Hawke’s are from a furrowed brow, a tired sigh. Your throat aches.

“Hawke thought she saw…something,” she says, laying down her quill. “Where have you been? Did she even  _ask_  you?”

“Llomerryn.” As long as you’re doing this, you might as well do it right. It’ll be good practice for when you finally get the guts to tell Hawke. You swallow. “Laying low. And no, she didn’t.”

She plants her elbows on her desk and digs her fingertips into her temples. “Three  _years_ , Isabela.”

“I know.” There’s heat in your face, and you hope she can’t see it. “I thought…balls, I don’t know what I thought.” You put your hands in your lap and try to sit still.

Her eyes narrow. “You must’ve thought something. It sounds like you did.”

“I thought I’d kill Castillon myself,” you admit, “and then I’d come back, free as a bird, and this…complication…wouldn’t exist between Hawke and me. That’s what I thought. But Castillon’s as untouchable as he’s always claimed, and I just got…caught up. And then I got frustrated, and I couldn’t stay away any longer.”

 “She’s been—”

“Don’t,” you interrupt, cringing. “I know, all right? I’m trying to figure it out. I’m trying to be…enough…for her.”

Aveline’s face softens. You can’t decide whether you like it or not. She comes around the desk and leans back against her stacks and stacks of papers.

“Just stay this time,” she says, and she looks more than a little vexed, her voice is gentle. “Hawke has remarkably low standards.”

You get up. The room feels too small. You laugh, more compulsory than genuine. “She does,” you agree.

Aveline’s brow furrows. “I’m still angry with you.”

“I know.”

“I mean, forget about Hawke. The damned qunari. I thought we were friends, but you left me in the middle of that mess.”

You fidget. “I know. We are…we were. I’m sorry.”

“I’m still angry with you,” she repeats. “Just so we’re clear.”

And then, contrary to everything she’s just said, she hugs you. She hugs you so hard that you think she might be trying to bruise you. She certainly isn’t overcome with relief at your return.

“Stupid,” she mutters. “I can’t believe I  _missed_ your sorry ass.”

You laugh, and this time, it  _is_ genuine. She joins in, chuckling until you’re both in hysterics. “It’s a great ass,” you gasp, “and you know it, big girl.”

She shakes her head, still chortling, and points at the door. You go before she changes her mind about forgiving you.


	44. Attrition

Hawke tenses when you touch the scar.

You use your fingertips: light and deft, running the length. Your insides quiver at the mangled construction of it, the ridges and valleys. She has so many scars—same as you—but this one dominates her torso. Her eyes skitter from yours when you try to meet them.

“Not as pretty as you remember, probably,” she says, with a weak half-laugh. She’s been holding herself so confidently, but a bit of her old vulnerability—that peculiar self-deprecation—shines through.

“Prettier,” you promise, and lower your lips to the scar. She stiffens at first, but then she slowly relaxes beneath you. Her throat clicks, as though she’s swallowed a moan. “Prettiest thing I’ve seen in three years.”

She laughs, and this time it sounds real, gusting out of her and ending with a soft gasp when you slip your fingers lower. Lower. Her heat is just as you remembered, the warm slick of her alive beneath your callouses.

“I bet you told that to all the girls and boys,” she teases.

You slip a finger inside her, just to the first knuckle, and rest your thumb—so casually—against her clit. She goes perfectly still; her breath, when it comes at all, is short and sharp.

“I told them all about you,” you say. You shuffle a little lower, so that you can replace your thumb with your tongue. Her groan is sudden, hoarse and visceral. “I told them,  _you’ll never have hips like Hawke’s_ , and  _you’ll never have eyes like hers_ , and  _I knew this girl who made the loveliest sounds when she came_.”

You stroke at her warmth until you hear her sharp gasp—until her hips buck up and her back bows—and then on until she sinks to the bed, loose-limbed and unfocused, half-lidded eyes. You cover her body with yours and kiss her. She draws a sharp breath of surprise against your lips, but she is liquid in your hands, allowing you to do what you will.

When you draw back, she opens her eyes slowly. That red paint she’s taken to wearing is smeared all the way down one cheek. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to stay?” she yawns, stretching languidly.

You could tell her right now. You could whisper it into her neck and stay forever, but it hurts your stomach to think of it, so you smile instead. “That depends,” you hedge. “Do you have any cake?”

Hawke laughs, pulling the sheet up to tuck it beneath her arms. She swings her legs out of bed. “A woman after my own heart,” she says, and your heart swells painfully. Maker, who thought this was a good idea? “I do, in fact.”

You reach out to touch her shoulder, push her back down to the bed. “I’ll get it,” you tell her, and before her eyes can soften too much, you add, “I’ve seen the way you’re favoring your knee. You’ll take forever to get back up the stairs.”

You vault out of reach before she can smack you for the jibe. “You wretch!” she calls after you, laughter in her voice. “You’re calling  _me_ old? Did you know there’s a gray hair or two on your head?”

“Lies,” you say, shrugging into her robe and darting out of sight.

But by the time you come back, cake and all, she’s fast asleep. Her mabari is curled at her feet, and lifts his head to huff softly at your reappearance. He eyes the cake with interest.

You leave it on the floor for him, an even trade, and slip under the covers instead. Hawke rolls closer to you in her sleep, a smile on her lips, the lines in her brow not so deep anymore.

It takes you a long time to fall asleep.


	45. Fools

You cannot believe how well the business with Castillon ends.

You walk away from a labor of six years with peace of mind  _and_  a ship, and by the time you’ve torn yourself away from the beautiful vessel to thank Hawke for helping you handle things, she’s gone.

“She went to Sundermount, messere,” Bodahn explains. “She didn’t say when she’d be back. I can send someone when she returns, if you like.”

You leave the estate with a foul taste in your mouth. Maybe the ship meant that she’d rather you leave, and you’re all bent on staying.

You try not to think about it. You work on the ship while she’s gone. You tear out the mustard-colored satin and imagine what the cabin would look like draped in blue instead. Maybe a little red here and there to make Hawke feel at home.

This business with the templars and mages is coming to a head. You can feel it: the city holds its breath, same as when you left three years ago. You have to be ready to leave, and you have to be ready to save Hawke from her own fool notion of duty.

If she’ll even hear it, of course. You’re not as sure as you’d like to be that she will come with you.

You have to know, you decide. You can’t go on like this, just  _wondering_. The instant you hear she’s back from the mountains, you leave your ship and go to Hightown by the fading daylight, your heartbeat in your ears.

This is awful. This is worse than you remember it. There’s a reason you’ve avoided love. It makes you feel like you’re flying one minute, only to rip your insides apart the next.

Bodahn lets you in, gesturing to the library. You close the door behind you. She looks up at the sound, startling like she’s seen a ghost. Her eyes drink you in like she’s not seen you in three years rather than three days. Beneath her peeling red paint, her face has gone wretchedly pale.

Suddenly, finally, your eyes open. At long last, you see. She’s terrified you’ll leave again, but of course she’s too kind to try to make you stay. She would rather give you your freedom than believe she held you here against your will.

Stupid, noble Hawke.

You give her the words she needs, and she gives you a few of her own, and all the stuttering and embarrassment is worth it when she heaves you up on her desk, scattering her papers everywhere. Undoubtedly, there’s ink on your ass, and you don’t even mind. She leans in and kisses you so fiercely that you forget to breathe, and when she pulls back, there are tears on her cheeks. You reach up to wipe them away. The last of her red paint comes off with them.

“There you are,” you whisper. “You’re crying.”

She laughs, presses her lips to your forehead, and then you’re crying, too, arms wrapped around her shoulders, face pressed to the hollow of her throat. Her fingers thread through your hair, keeping you close.

“I missed you,” she tells you. “Hang me for a fool, but I missed you so much.”

“You  _are_ a fool,” you declare, closing your eyes. “But you’re my fool now.”


	46. Everything and Nothing

Everything changes, but at the same time,  _nothing_ changes.

There is a new easiness in the air, despite Kirkwall’s troubles. You fight and laugh and flirt with Hawke, and sometimes she smiles sideways at you in a way that puts your heart in your throat, but everything is really the same as before—just without the anxiety. It’s nice, you decide.

You also spend more nights at her Hightown mansion than you do in your room at the Hanged Man, and nearly as often, she spends the night in Lowtown with you.

“I have to get away from all that paperwork sometimes,” she mutters, picking up the ship in a bottle on your table and smiling at it. “It’s making me so  _cranky_.”

“That’s what you have servants for, Hawke,” you remind her, pulling a bottle of Llomerryn’s finest rum from beneath your bed.

“Ooooh,” she says, eyeing the bottle with interest. “What’s that?”

“Rum.” You smile and dangle the glasses in front of her. “The nice kind, so don’t knock it back like you always do.”

“Pot, meet kettle,” she scoffs, but she sips slowly and the look on her face is worth the gold it cost you. “Maker,” she sighs, sinking back against your headboard. “I think I’ve died and gone to…well, not His side, because I’ve heard that’s terribly boring, but somewhere  _nice_. Is this what you were doing for three years? Because I would’ve taken my sweet time coming back, too.”

You laugh. “No, I was  _not_ drinking this curst expensive rum for three years. I worked, you know.”

“Oh?” she yawns, and takes another sip. “Doing what?”

You hesitate. You wonder if she’ll believe you. You hardly believe it yourself.

She runs a thumb up the arch of your instep while you’re thinking, tickling you. “It’s silly,” you say, sipping your own rum for courage. “D’you remember what you did, when we first met? Talked to everyone you ran across, asked them if they needed help? That’s what I did in Llomerryn, when I finally got there. The pay was shit, but I made do.”

She smiles, and you notice—not for the first time—that she has new wrinkles, deeper than the Hawke’s you left behind. “That warms the cockles of my heart,” she teases. “Isabela, do-gooder of Llomerryn.”

“Yes, well, remember some of the work you used to do, and tell me if all of it was good.”

She chuckles. “You’ve got me there. Remember that moldering corpse we returned?”

“I wouldn’t say that was bad, precisely,” you hedge. “Just creepy.” You pause, and then you say, in what you hope is a casual tone, “And there was Castillon. I had a handful of…opportunities, I suppose…to eliminate him. They never worked out.”

Her mouth crooks up on one side. “Well,” she says, clinking her glass against yours, “we got him in the end, didn’t we?”

You’ve already thanked her; it would be stupid to do it again. Instead, you lean forward and kiss her, soft and easy and brief, and you cherish the few seconds afterward when she looks pleased and befuddled and happy. You go on talking into the night, unhurried. It is the same, because it ends with the two of you drunk and sweaty and naked and breathless, laughing, groaning; it is different because she stays, and so do you.


	47. Routine

This wasteland puts you on edge.

Orlais was enough to test Hawke’s luck. Sure, she’s had great luck, but that little misadventure very nearly ended very poorly. This desert is a hundred times worse. There are dwarves chanting for her  _blood_. She is not as put off by this as you think she should be.

She sighs; her eyes scan the last few lines of the plaque before she straightens up, rubbing her lower back. “Someday I'll visit a place with no ancient evils, horrors, devouring plagues, or insanity,” she mutters. “Maybe a beach.”

She sounds dangerously maudlin. You want her to take this seriously, but not  _that_ seriously. “I can recommend a few, if you’d like,” you offer.

The words have the desired effect: her frown lifts, transforming into a lopsided smirk. “Please do,” she encourages. “I hope no clothes are required?”

“Not by any beach I frequent.”

“I can’t believe you aren’t writing this down,” Bethany interrupts, nudging Varric. She’s barely even pink. All those dirty novels you’ve sent her over the years have clearly done wonders for her tolerance.

“Sunshine, they do this day in and day out,” he replies. He sounds almost bored—certainly disinterested, at least. It’s insulting. “I have enough material already for a few dozen tawdry novels, and I’m fresh out of ink.”

She chuckles. “You weather it so well. I suppose Aveline is less tolerant?”

You snort. “She  _loves_ it. It means that Varric’s stopped writing about her and Donnic.”

“Nothing to write about there,” Varric grumbles. “Happily married only sells for one installment. There’s no drama in  _that_.”

“I hate to interrupt,” Hawke says, pulling her daggers free, “but I hear the angry chanting of more people out for my blood.”

She sounds irked now. It’s an improvement over maudlin.

“You say that like it’s a common occurrence,” Bethany comments, brandishing her staff.

“You say it like it’s not,” you laugh. You see the sniper just in time; you whistle, Hawke drops, and your dagger sprouts from his chest only a second later.

“Thank you!” she shouts after you, disgruntled, as you run to retrieve the blade. You blow a kiss over your shoulder, and just before you return to the fighting, you catch a glimpse of her wide smile.


	48. Duty

“Towers of gold, as requested,” Hawke says, upending a purse on her red sheets.

“That’s hardly a  _tower_ ,” you scoff, but you still pile the gems and coins just so, admiring the glitter. Beside you, Hawke closes her eyes, huffing out an exhausted breath. She’s pink from the bath, but there are still a few scratches on her face, angry red lines where Corypheus’s magic left its mark.

“You know,” you say, reaching out to touch the arch of her eyebrow, “you’d look dashing with a piercing right here. Silver. It would match your coloring.”

She chuckles. “You think so? I’m bad at maintaining that sort of thing.”

“It’s easier than you’d think. I never take this one out.” You wiggle the gold stud below your lip. “We put enough jewelry on you…or  _in_  you, as the case may be…and you’d make a wonderful pirate.”

She cracks one eye open. “You think so?”

You trace a finger down her cheek, down her throat. She shivers under your touch. “There’s a compelling argument for getting out of Kirkwall sooner rather than later,” you tell her, feeling the steady, slow beat of her heart beneath your hand.

“Is there,” she says. “Compel me, my queen.”

You scoff. “You know I haven’t kept up that title. I can hardly be Queen of the Eastern Seas if I don’t even  _sail_.”

“I didn’t call you Queen of the Eastern Seas, you lush,” she laughs. “But I’m sure no one’s stolen your precious title.”

“And no one could steal yours, even if you left.”

She opens the other eye, too, and looks at you. “Soon,” she says. There’s a touch of guilt in her voice. “I promise we’ll go soon. But…I’ve unfinished business here. You know I hate it.”

“I know no such thing,” you reply, sliding down to lay beside her. The gold clinks as it shifts, and you both giggle at the sound. “It’s important to you.”

She tugs you close, her arm around your shoulders, and you rest your cheek against her breast, closing your eyes.

“It is,” she admits. “I know…I know Bethany’s safe. With the Wardens. Best she could hope for, really—not free, but free of the Circle, at least, and she doesn’t have to hide. Doesn’t every mage deserve that opportunity?”

“You know what I think,” you murmur. Her hand on your shoulder traces patterns; you try to make out the words.

“Everyone deserves freedom,” she quotes.

“I just don’t usually stick my neck out for it,” you say.

“You did when you freed those slaves,” she points out.

“An anomaly.”

“And when you came back with the relic.”

“I did that for you,” you say, your chest squeezing a little the way it always does when you think of that awful night, “and you know it.”

“Sure,” she agrees. You can feel her smile. “But I wasn’t around when you freed those slaves. Could you really leave Kirkwall now, when people need us?”

You sigh. “Not without you, anyway. But if you change your mind, the ship’s ready to leave.”

She kisses your hair. “Thanks, ‘Bela.”


	49. Clan

Merrill’s hands fuss with the tea.

Hawke wanted to see her, too, but you convinced her that you ought to come alone first. She’s been so down since that business with the mirror, and her clan, and sometimes Hawke can be too…blunt. This requires a sort of finesse that maybe she doesn’t possess.

She snorted when you said that. “Thanks ever so, Isabela.  _Subtle_ isn’t a word I’d use to describe  _you_ either.”

You still think you made the right choice. Merrill pushes the tea across to you and sits, the saddest frown on her lips. The drink is more watery than you’d like, but you don’t tell her that.

“I’ve been thinking, Kitten,” you say.

She doesn’t perk up the way she usually does. “About what?” she asks, staring down into her own drink.

“About Kirkwall. About leaving.”

Her chin jerks up at that. “Oh, you can’t go,” she says, all in a rush, her eyes already welling with tears. “You only just got here, and Hawke would—“

“No, silly, Hawke’s coming with me. When this business with the templars is through, anyway.”

“Oh!” She brightens a bit at that, but there’s still a sad droop to her mouth. “Well. I’m sure…you’ll be very happy, won’t you? Going back to the sea, and everything. With Hawke.”

“I will,” you say, amused that she still hasn’t quite gotten it. “But I need more than Hawke to sail a ship, you know.”

Her brow furrows. “Fenris would be good, wouldn’t he? There’s nothing keeping him here.”

“No, and he’s already agreed, anyway.”

“Oh.” She looks lost now, as though she knows you’re trying to tell her something but she can’t for the life of her figure out what. You relish it a little, like watching someone unwrap a spectacular present. “Well, that’s…good. He learns fast. He’ll be a good sailor, right?”

“I think you would, too. We could get you an eyepatch, if you like”

“Me?” Merrill squeaks, her eyes round. “Mythal, no, I’d be so sick—“

“You don’t want to come, then? Oh, that’s a shame. I’m very put out.”

She makes a funny noise in her throat, somewhere between a sob and a giggle. “You really want me to come?”

“Of course, you goose. We’ll all be pirates together. Well, we’ll mostly all be refugees together, I expect, but the ship gives it some respectability, I think.”

Merrill gets up, her lip trembling, and comes around the table to throw her arms around you. “Oh, lethallan, of course I’ll come. I couldn’t stay here, with you and Hawke and everyone gone! What would I do with myself? You’re my  _clan_.”

You pat her back and clear your throat. It’s nice, you think, to know that you’d be missed. “And you’re my crew, Kitten. Now, why don’t we go visit the hat shop while there’s still a hat shop to visit? We’ll pick out something fantastic for you.”

“I can’t  _wait_ ,” she declares, taking your hand to tug you toward the door.


	50. Horizon

In the end, you sail away from Kirkwall a thousand times richer than when you arrived.

Your throat is killing you, and the gash in your thigh is still healing, but you’re tucked safely beneath Hawke’s arm, on your own ship, with plenty of supplies. You’re good at running, especially when you’ve got someone to watch your back. You’ll run so well that no one will ever, ever find Hawke.

After the first bout of seasickness, she takes well to the open waves. By the time you leave Varric, Anders, and Bethany in port, she’s even a little tan, the sunburn peeling away to show her new freckles.

You pick up a good crew, and good thing, because you don’t plan to return for a while. You can live for some weeks on the open ocean, and that’s a nice place to stay while the templars march on Kirkwall.

By sunset the third week, you think you’ve never been so happy. Salt spray on your face, hard work under the sun, long nights in your cabin with Hawke. Merrill and Fenris take well to the ship, too; Merrill is scurrying up and down the shroud in no time, and Fenris doesn’t even leave any corpses lying around. You miss Aveline, but for once in your life, you don’t worry that you’ll never see an old friend again. She’ll be there when you return to Kirkwall after the storm’s passed, as staunch and stubborn as ever.

But best of all is Hawke: Hawke dangling from the shroud, new piercings in her eyebrow and ears, her old armor shucked away. She looks less like a Champion from Hightown every day, and more and more like the Marian she’d hidden underneath, grinning and wild and not suited for a life of ideals and paperwork.

You find her in the crow’s nest at dawn one morning and heave yourself up beside her. She leans into you without hesitating, tucking her head against your shoulder and wrapping her arm around your waist.

“Can we stay out here forever?” she asks, her voice still creaky with sleep. “Just the sea, and the crew, and fish. Maker, I love fish.”

You laugh. “You’ll tire of it eventually. The appeal wears off after a while.”

“I don’t think it will,” she says, breathing deep in the crook of your neck.

“There’s a lot to the world, you know,” you say, draping an arm over her shoulders. “A lot of places you won’t ever know if we stay at sea forever.”

She looks up at you, blue eyes shining, and smiles. “Show me,” she says.

That’s not an offer you can refuse.


End file.
